Some folks blame the Supreme Court for Al Gore's loss in the 2000 election. They're wrong.

Al Gore lost the election in West Virginia.

West Virginia is as reliable a Democratic state as they come. Since FDR's first election in 1932, West Virginia has voted for the Democrat in all but three presidential elections: 1956, 1972 and 1984.

That's right: West Virginia voted for Dukakis.

Gore lost in West Virginia because the Bush campaign plastered the airwaves and newspapers with the message that "Al Gore wants your guns." West Virginia may be one of the last solid union states in the country, but don't even think about discussing gun control. Gore didn't campaign much in the state, and he lost West Virginia's five electoral votes. The results of the 2000 election? 271 electoral votes for Bush, 266 for Gore. Five votes.

The 2004 election looks to be just as tight as the one four years ago. But this time, the Bush campaign may be caught napping, right here in the (solid) New South.

Since Bush's election in 2000, the traditional manufacturing industries of North Carolina have disappeared. There are a few small textile plants still operating, but their parent companies are all in bankruptcy or receivership. Furniture production has largely shifted overseas, and just yesterday R.J. Reynolds announced that it would be buying about half as much tobacco this year as it did last year. That hurts not only the farmers, but what workers remain at Reynolds's plant in Winston-Salem.

North Carolina is one of the have-not states in the current recovery. While my small corner is doing alright for now, IBM (the largest local employer after the State of North Carolina) has announced plans to outsource thousands of high-paying IT jobs. Programmers at Big Blue are making some serious noises about a union, even though North Carolina is a "right-to-work" state.

Still, getting laid off from a tech job isn't nearly as bad as losing a factory job. Techies are educated; they have plenty of marketable skills. They can find work somewhere. Most of the people laid off from the textile and furniture factories are in their forties and fifties. A large percentage of them didn't graduate from high school. Some of these folks don't even know how to read. So they struggle through GED and literacy classes at the local community college so that they'll be able to apply for jobs at Wal-Mart or Target at half the pay of their previous positions.

It's not Bush's fault that many heavy industries have abandoned their traditional homes here in North Carolina. Previous presidents, both Republican and Democrat, signed the trade agreements that led to industrial flight. And I happen to agree with the Prez that free trade is the best way to spur the global economy. But we have to do more to help the people hurt by these fundamental shifts. A lot more. And that's where the Prez and his boys are missing the boat.

The other major voting block in the state is the military. More and more, wives and parents have been speaking out about the Prez's policies in Iraq. They're not critcizing the military leadership, mind you. That would be unthinkable. But they are doing something almost as shocking. They're taking Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all to task for their apparent lack of concern for the troops, especially those who have died. The rumblings from the homefront are becoming increasingly unpleasant, and even a June pullout from Iraq likely won't salve all the wounds.

Those idled factory workers and military families were solid Bush supporters. But that support has seriously eroded. Two recent statewide polls put Bush behind Kerry--one sets the margin at 11 percent. Such early polls are useless as fall election predictors, but they ought to serve as a wake-up call to the Prez's political team. Conservative columnist Robert Novak said as much last week. It's always a bad idea to take a state for granted, even if you won it by 13 points the first time around.

Do I think Kerry will win North Carolina? I don't know. But when you factor in a competitive race for John Edwards's Senate seat (Democrat Erskine Bowles far ahead of all possible Republican challengers at this point) and a reasonably popular Democratic governor seeking a second term, it might be harder for voters to vote for the local Democrat and the presidential Republican. I do think the race will be a lot closer than some might expect. I've been saying that for a while now.

Anything can happen in the next eight months. Look what happened in Spain. Terrorist bombings on Thursday, a new government is elected three days later. The presidential race is simply too close to call, and likely will remain that way until the day after the election. Or later.

In November, we get to choose between strikingly different visions of American foreign and domestic policy. And unlike the 2000 race, both candidates are already quite clear about their differences.

It should be one hell of a ride.

Jon Worley thinks elections are almost as much fun as egg-tossing contests.