I know you're tired of hearing about it, but I'm going to keep talking about it as long as the Obama, his campaign, and so many Obama supporters refuse to acknowledge the obvious: he's performed poorly among white working class voters in every part of the country.
I'm not sure if it's spin or denial or some combination. (I guess if Hillary were poised to win the nomination, her supporters would be denying her problem with African-Americans.) For a while, when Hillary's campaign was alive and kicking, it made certain political sense to deny the problem, given that it was central to her electability argument. But now that Obama is the sure nominee, it makes no sense to uphold the pretense. On the contrary, failure to acknowledge the problem may prevent Obama from solving it.
We can debate about whether the problem poses a minor or large risk to his candidacy; but on the question of whether he has a problem, there can be no debate. The truth below the fold.
This article by Ron Brownstein tells you pretty much all need to know.
On the morning after Pennsylvania, Obama told radio host Roland Martin, "We have won the white blue-collar vote in a whole bunch of states." But that's not true, no matter how the white blue-collar vote is defined.
Brownstein points out that Obama has won this demographic in only one contested state, Wisconsin, and in only two uncontested ones, Utah and Vermont. He even lost in his home state of Illinois. He won forty percent or more of white working class whites in only six states.
But at least he won the working class whites last night in Oregon. Sadly, no.
But...but...but as Josh Marshalland others have shown, it's a matter of geography: Obama doesn't have a white working class problem, Applachia has an Obama problem, right? Actually...
Obama did just as poorly among white working class voters before the Applachian states started voting:
In Democratic primaries held on or before Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, whites who have not finished college favored the New York senator by a cumulative 59 percent to 32 percent, according to exit polls of voters conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks...In primaries since Feb. 5, that group has favored Clinton by 64 percent to 34 percent.
I guess you could argue that those numbers are skewed because they include the results from Florida and Michigan. So let's look at a few individual states decidedly not in Appalachia. The exit polls I've found don't identify white working class voters, so these numbers are for whites alone. Because Obama does well among affluent whites, the numbers for white working class voters would be even more lopsided:
Arizona: Clinton won by 15
Massachusetts: Clinton won by 18
Indiana: Clinton won by 20
Rhode Island: Clinton won by 26
New Jersey: Clinton won by 35
The national polls add to the picture. Pewfound that he is losing by 30 among white working class voters, and the AP found that he trails by 39. Clearly, the problem isn't confined to Appalachia.
So why did Obama do so poorly in Appalachian counties? Because they have an unusually high percentage of working class whites. Also because he chose not to fight for West Virginia and Kentucky; had he done so, he might have lost by less than he did in other non-Appalachian states. His problem among working class whites may be more pronounced in the Midwest and in the South--he seems to do a little better with this demo in the West--but to say the problem is one of geography as opposed to race and class is silly. It's akin to claiming that Clinton has a problem not with African-Americans but with the South. (And of course, even if the problem were confined to Appalachia, that alone would be of concern. After all, the region includes huge swaths of Pennsylvania and Ohio.)
So the facts tell us that Obama has performed poorly among the white working class across the country. Some white elitis--I mean "creative class" types--seem willing and even eager to say goodbye once and for all to the white working class. They envision a party built on affluent whites, African-Americans, and Latinos.
But leaving alone for now the moral problem of abandoning millions of voters hammered by globalization and corporatization, there's is a political problem as well. One need not fetishize nor romanticize the white working class to note that it is a uniquely valuable demographic:
Significantly, with the exceptions of New Mexico and Florida (48), the twelve most contested states in the last couple of presidential elections all have levels of white working class voters well above the national average. These are the five states which have been carried by Democrats by an average of less than 5 points in the two elections (Michigan, 59, Minnesota, 58, Oregon, 64, Pennsylvania, 56, Wisconsin, 64), the three states that changed hands across elections (Iowa, 70, New Hampshire, 60, New Mexico) and the four states the GOP carried by an average of less than 5 points in the two elections (Florida, Missouri, 58, Nevada, 56, Ohio, 60)iv...
Looked at in terms of states—and of course the presidential election is fought out on a state by state basis (though popular vote results typically track electoral vote results and in fact are amplified by them)—the challenge for the Democrats will be to hold the line at minimum on the white working class vote in the highly competitive states they won in both 2000 and 2004 (Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). This means keeping their white working class deficit in these states down to roughly eight points on average. And in the four highly competitive states they lost in both 2000 and 2004 (Florida, Missouri, Nevada and Ohio), they will have to cut their average 13 point deficit at least in half to carry these states.
Which is to say that Obama can't afford to get crushed among the white working class. Or, to frame it positively, if he does relatively well among the white working class, there's no way he can lose. Perhaps the lopsided numbers in the primary reflect a preference for Clinton rather than an aversion to Obama (although his unfavorable rating among these voters has gone up 12 points since November.) Perhaps enough of these voters will vote for Obama in a general election (and against free-trader extremist John McCain.)
But hope is not an electoral strategy. In a previous diary, I explained how Obama could improve his performance with white working class voters, and in another oneI argued that he may be uniquely qualified to speak to their concerns. I'll have more diaries on this topic later. I'm sure you can't wait.