POLITICO Nightly: The state where Democrats have hit rock bottom
By Ry Rivard Presented by Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia shows off his vest to photographers outside the White House in Washington on Jan. 29, 1987. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP CANARY IN A COALMINE — If West Virginia had a Mount Rushmore, the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, the longest-serving senator in American history, would be on it. Even before he died in 2010 , his name was everywhere in the state — on bridges, roads, federal buildings, libraries, hospitals and even a space telescope — leading to much chortling during his lifetime about all the things in West Virginia paid for by taxpayers but named after the pork-loving Byrd. For much of his career, West Virginia was a Democratic state. Now it’s one of the reddest states on the map. In a measure of how far to the right West Virginia has veered over the past two decades, Republican lawmakers now want to remove a statue of Byrd from a prominent spot in the statehouse. The exp...