West Virginia update

Asked my WV contact how's it going over there. My correspondent, who prefaces this with "I'm not in a big city of any variety", is a splendid writer with great info. Here is the response (put up with permission, of course):

I tend to think Zogby is out of his mind. Or maybe an outlier. Kerry was hurt badly by the SwiftBoatLiarsClub, and since he didn't do doodly about it, I'm guessing it's gonna take longer to recover. One blessing, it was early.

Secondly, Bush letting the weapons ban lapse has helped, and hasn't helped Kerry. NRA hasn't yet endorsed (that I can find) but is still putting out a lot of negative stuff on Kerry. Like: he's a twinkie because he doesn't even hold his gun right. (You have to be blotto to hold yer gun "right")

My local goodle boy source sez all the Bush voters he's talked to say "Let him finish what he started."

Same time, this guy sez he doesn't believe a single poll, that they're nuts. And "has a gut feeling" that Kerry's gonna win big.

Bush has had paid staff and office in every county in WV for about nine months now. Kerry still doesn't. The local Dems have pretty much given up trying to get anything from the campaign, no response.

Sorry that's not cheerier. . . . I'm doin' a lot of praying along with voter registration (one more week) (after that, gonna work on getting absentee ballots to home bound, and our nursing home).

And I asked about TV ads:

There may be ads on TV, but because we're isolated, we only get satellite stuff, and it's usually NYC or Chicago. Don't know how Charleston, Morgantown, or Wheeling are doing. . . . Best thing Kerry could have done would have been billboards with the Sportsmen for Kerry thingy on them. Up there in blaze orange hangin' onto them dead ducks! Ah, well.

I hope the Zogby numbers for WV are way off. And what's with the lack of Kerry presence? Didn't they learn from Gore (who lost WV by a very slim margin)?