At the rate things are going, it may be that the list of leading West Virginia Democrats attending the party's convention in Charlotte is going to be shorter than the list of those who aren't.
The Associated Press reported the following in an unbylined item this evening in a terse three-paragraph squib with some pretty amusing attempts at impact-minimizing verbiage (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
Democratic W.Va. governor won't attend convention
Democratic West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin says he won't attend the party's national convention, citing serious problems with President Barack Obama. [1]
A Tomblin spokesman, Chris Stadelman, said Monday that the governor has serious problems with Republican Mitt Romney, too.
Tomblin is an automatic superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. He says his time is best spent working in West Virginia, not attending the four-day political rally in Charlotte, N.C.
In West Virginia's presidential primary, Tomblin refused to say whether he voted for Obama.
Tomlbin isn't alone in sitting this one out - West Virginia's Sen. Joe Manchin and congressman Nick Rahall say they don't plan to attend the convention, either.
Each of the three faces a Republican opponent in November.
Notes:
[1] -- Gosh AP, I bet you could identify at least one specific "serious problem" Tomblin has with President Obama. Hint: It's a four-letter word which starts with "C," ends in "L," and rhymes with "hole" -- as in the polling hole any politician in West Virginia who comes within a mile of the guy who promised to bankrupt the Mountain State's arguably most important industry.
[2] -- So the Democratic National Convention is now a mere "political rally"? Any AP reporter should know that these convention are where the party sets its rules for the next four years concerning the next presidential cycle's primaries and the like. Oh, it also happens to be the place where the incumbent president is formally renominated. In theory at least, if most of the delegates do what West Virginia's three leading politicians do and in essence boycott the event, the President won't get renominated.
[3] -- Geez, stop the presses. These Republican opponents wouldn't possibly have names, would they?
If anyone can remember a time since the pre-civil rights era when prominent politicians, especially a sitting governor, effectively boycotted the Democratic National Convention, I'd like to know when it happened.
This should be major news. It's not unreasonable to believe that the establishment press will try very hard to downplay this development. One clue will be how much the AP extends its currently posted item. You can bet the ranch that if any Republican governor were to decide not to come the party's convention this fall, it would front-page and leading-the-broadcast news.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
