West Virginia is the Democrat's Vermont. You can no longer win it, especially with a social liberal like Edwards.
No... the Democrats Vermont (ie: collapsing organisation yadda, yadda, yadda) is probably somewhere in the Deep South.
With WV the problem is the rift between the national Democrats and the state Party (which is itself divided into several warring factions, as in Rahall v Hechler) combined with the misguided decision of most national candidates to try to peel of liberal Republican voters in the middle suburbs. Social liberals do fine in statewide elections (every time Rockefeller runs for re-election that tag gets thrown at him. And every time he runs for re-election he wins a landslide) if they co-operate with local Party/UMW bosses and campaign hard on basic economic issues (especially if they can add a moral twist to them).
Interestingly, West Virginia is one of only a handful of states where Dean would have done better than Kerry (although he wouldn't have won it unless he won the national election) as built up some solid links with some big players in WV politics and couldn't be touched on guns.
As for Edwards... it depends. If he campaigned like he did during his Presidential bid (ie: poverty being a moral issue that something must be done about) he'd have had a great chance of winning the state, but if he was the Kerry imitation he were during the campaign, he'd do pretty badly (but better than Kerry).
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