Washington's 'Obama to Trump' counties: Signs from the Democratic primary

The 2016 election produced, in Washington, a distant mirror of what was happening in industrial, rust-belt America.

Much of Southwest Washington, including counties Democratic for generations, fell to President Donald Trump. Gov. Jay Inslee was badly beaten. Local and legislative offices flipped. The Democrats' campaign was barely present.

New Democratic State Chair Tina Podlodowski made it her business to reconnect. After all, Trump carried Grays Harbor and Pacific Counties, the only two places in Washington that went for the Democrats' 1972 presidential candidate "Lonesome George" McGovern.

Does the Democrats' 2020 presidential primary tell us anything about a recovery?

Five counties which voted for President Obama in 2012 flipped to Trump in 2016.

Joe Biden was carrying four of them in Tuesday night's primary against Bernie Sanders. He is ahead in Clallam, Grays Harbor, Mason and Cowlitz counties. He is doing very well in Cowlitz, which decisively rejected both Clinton and Inslee four years ago.

Pacific County is the exception, with Bernie ahead by 49 votes.

Will the Democrats' courtship keep up this year? The Pacific County Democrats' crab feed, now rescheduled to mid-May, is nearly a century old and the oldest continuous political event in the state. It never sees Gov. Inslee, and occasionally doesn't even get a note from him.

It has been courted by Sen. Maria Cantwell, who once missed a glitzy Gridiron Dinner in Washington, D.C., to spoon potato salad in South Bend. She carries Pacific County. So does Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who spent one evening serving the crab.

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