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CHARLESTON, W.Va.--Everyone knows about the red-blue division in American politics. As he has done before, Barack Obama railed against it after his decisive win in North Carolina last week. He warned jubilant supporters, "We know what's coming--the attempts to play on our fears and exploit our differences, to turn us against each other for pure political gain, to slice and dice this country into red states and blue states; blue-collar and white-collar; white, black, and brown; young, old; rich, poor."

In fact, it's happening already--inside the Democratic Party. Obama is winning the blue Democrats: young voters, upscale urban professionals, well-educated liberals, and African-Americans. Hillary Rodham Clinton is attracting the red Democrats: seniors, blue-collar and rural voters, and those who are fairly conservative.

The split got bigger after Clinton became a gun-toting, whiskey-drinking, street-f ighting, tax-cutting populist. "I know how hard you're working," she told her supporters in Indianapolis, "working for yourselves and working for your families. I will never stop fighting for you."

In Indiana, nearly half of the Democratic primary voters said they had a gun in their household, according to the network exit poll. Those Democrats tended to vote for Clinton. And the half who did not own a gun? They went for Obama. In Indiana, Clinton lost liberal Democrats to Obama. The candidates split the moderates. Conservatives voted heavily for Clinton.

The Indiana contest was the first time this year that we've seen such a sharp ideological divide among Democratic voters. The deeper that split gets, the greater the risk to Democrats in the fall if Obama wins the nomination. Among Clinton voters in North Carolina, fewer than half said they would support Obama over presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, whereas 70 percent of Obama voters said they would vote for Clinton over McCain.

Red Democrats--the ones who are now voting for Clinton--are the ones most likely to vote for a Republican. That's why Clinton would be the stronger nominee, her supporters argue; she would be more likely to hold those voters. If her campaign continues to drive up those red voters' hostility to Obama, and if he wins the nomination nonetheless, he will have a hard time keeping them in the Democratic fold, especially against John McCain.

McCain is a conservative Republican, but he has an independent streak that boosts his appeal to independent voters. He told his supporters last month, "We'll be going to places where no Republican candidate has ever appeared."

If Obama is the Democratic nominee, he should do well in places with lots of African-Americans and young, affluent whites. Virginia and Colorado are historically Republican states where Democrats have been gaining among just those kinds of voters. But Obama may be weaker in historically Democratic states where red Democrats predominate. He could have trouble in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and even Michigan, industrial states with a lot of Reagan Democrats who voted for Clinton in the primaries.

West Virginia is on that list, too. For most of the 20th century, West Virginia was a solidly Democratic state. After voting for Herbert Hoover in 1928, West Virginia did not vote for a nonincumbent Republican for president for more than 70 years. Voters there even supported Michael Dukakis in 1988.

That streak ended in 2000, when George W. Bush surprised almost everyone by carrying West Virginia. He won because of his stands on social issues--abortion, gays--and, most important, guns, in a state where more than 70 percent of the voters have a gun in their household. What you get in West Virginia is not so much Reagan Democrats as Bush Democrats.

West Virginia Republicans think they know how to beat Obama. As Kennie Bass, a West Virginia native and longtime political reporter, explained, "They would likely paint him, if he's the nominee, as a far-left liberal who is pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-civil unions.... Social issues register very high on the meter here." And economic issues? Democrats could be in for a surprise. With coal at about $100 a ton, Bass said, "these are not difficult times in West Virginia, economically."

Suppose Obama gets the nomination and his campaign decides that the only way he can win is to get back the votes of Democrats like those in West Virginia. You can be sure he will think seriously about asking Clinton to join his ticket.