As a longtime West Virginian who likes Barack Obama, it's sad to see everyone -- from the media to the candidate himself -- predicting his defeat in Tuesday's state primary.

One can't help but contrast it with the 1960 primary, in which John Kennedy was the winner - also surprising everyone. But at least he tried - and the state meant so much more to the campaign and the country in those days.  Kennedy's only Democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey, quickly dropped out of the national race the night he lost the West Virginia primary.

John Kennedy knew he had an "uphill fight" against Hubert Humphrey in May 1960; but he didn't quietly give it up, as John Kerry did in 2004 and Obama seems to have done in 2008.

Kennedy challenged  West Virginians to stand against the redneck "biggot" stereotype and show that they were not prejudiced against Catholics -- a card that some Humphrey supporters were trying to play, well preceding the "dirty tricks" strategies that have become so familiar today.

Cynics among us will say that Kennedy merely outspent his opponent, "buying" the state using a corrupt machine system. I helped to write a book about that, interviewing a powerful political boss of that time who said that, although he accepted money from Kennedy's friends, he knew that he had better get on board because his county's voters liked the man so much. 

West Virginians liked Kennedy because he stood up and told them things that rang true in a dramatically changing world. Here's one issue that I wish that Democrats could regain the "high ground" on today, but don't seem to be able to do:

Coal and timber companies in 1960 dominated the physical and economic landscape of southern West Virginia, pretty much as they do today.  More coal jobs left the state in the decade preceding 1960 than any other decade. Mining employment dropped from about 115,000 in 1950 to something like 45,000 in 1960 - with disastrous effects on local economies. But huge amounts of coal continued to be mined.

By 1990, the industry was mining more than 160 million tons of coal from West Virginia and employing fewer than 35,000 people here. The mining industry continues to boast "jobs and development" with a straight face.

Both Democrats support "clean coal" technologies, with few (if any) notion about West Virginia's "post-coal" landscape, either physical and economic. I wish someone at the highest levels of the party could see beyond the next tumbling coal wall -- and share a vision of the more distant horizon with the rest of us.