Despite a well-financed television campaign and endorsements from Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV and Rep. Nick J. Rahall II, Obama is expected to finish well behind Clinton in West Virginia's primary, which will award 28 pledged delegates.
"We've got our work cut out for us," acknowledged Tom Bowen, a spokesman for Obama's West Virginia effort.
Democratic registration statewide is up by more than 16,000 voters since 2006, compared with an increase of 4,000 for the GOP. But that reflects "as much interest in the local races as there is in the national," said Greg Ely, Hardy County clerk.
Hand-lettered campaign signs promoting Democrats running for family-court judge and assessor cluster along Hardy County's winding roads. There are only a few signs for either Obama or Clinton, but in one yard, a placard with a red slash on it mocks, "Osama, Obama and Chelsea's Mama."
The sign belongs to Eric Hardy, 38, a former Democrat who works at a woodworking plant. Now a die-hard Republican and president of the West Virginia Coon Hunters Assn., Hardy opposes any Democrat "who wants to go after my guns."
Obama "takes the cake," he said, "because of, you know, who he is." He suspects Obama for his "Muslim name," and comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., rankle him. "He's just a mistake any way you look at him," Hardy said.
Obama's support among white male voters, the most tightly contested bloc over the primary season, has slipped. He did well early on in states such as Virginia, where he took 52% of the white male vote to Clinton's 47%. But this week, Obama lost, 58% to 42%, among white men in Indiana and 55% to 42% in North Carolina. He has won majorities of white male voters in 10 states since January, but Clinton bested him in 13 others, including the critical northern battlegrounds of Ohio and Pennsylvania.
"This is the single biggest problem he faces," said William A. Galston, a former senior Clinton administration domestic policy advisor who considers Obama the apparent nominee after this week's results. "This is a party problem, not just his alone. But [Obama] has to be particularly sensitive to addressing these voters."
Galston credits Obama with trying to win over suspicious white voters by tailoring his North Carolina victory speech to talk more about his hardscrabble upbringing and his love of country.
"He needs to keep talking in comforting terms about the issues on people's minds and how his own story fits in with their concerns," Galston said.
