COMMENTARY | According to the Associated Press, one of the most bizarre political outcomes occurred in the West Virginia primary when a hitherto unknown presidential candidate named Keith Judd won 40 percent of the vote to President Obama's 60 percent.
Obama has been running pretty much unopposed, since no major candidate has chosen to challenge him. What makes the results in West Virginia intriguing is that Judd is not even a resident of West Virginia. He is currently residing in the Federal Correctional Institution in Beaumont, Texas for threats he made at the University of New Mexico in 1999. Judd was able to get his name on the West Virginia ballot by paying a $2,500 filing fee and filling out some forms.
There are a number of takeaways from this result.
First, it appears that President Obama is very unpopular in West Virginia. This may have something to do with his promise to bankrupt the coal industry as a way to combat global warming, which Hot Air reported during the 2008 campaign.
Second, West Virginia might want to look at reforming its somewhat lax ballot laws. As a convicted felon, Judd cannot actually serve in any public office, not to speak of the presidency of the United States. He has won a certain degree of fame, perhaps all 15 minutes of it, by playing a joke on the president of the United States.
Curiously, the people who are most outraged at the result are not Democratic partisans of President Obama. The Daily Paul suggests that had everyone who had voted for Judd as a protest vote had instead voted for Ron Paul in the Republican Primary, Paul would have won his first and only state. The embarrassment would therefore have been Mitt Romney's and not Obama's.
The result from the North Carolina primary was almost as embarrassing to President Obama, according to the Daily Caller. Even though the president was running unopposed, 20.8 percent of Democrats voted "no preference" over Obama. It was hardly a vote of confidence in the state where the Democrats are scheduled to hold their national convention.
The Obama re-election campaign has seemed snakebit since the beginning, with missteps and embarrassments. This is just one more example.
