The media blowhards tell me Obama can't win poor whites. How do they explain this?
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama holds a 2 to 1 edge over Republican Sen. John McCain among the nation's low-wage workers [...]
Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers -- a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November -- Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate.
Got that? Despite the always-wrong bloviators who prattled on and on about Obama's "working class" problem, fact is he does exceedingly well with that target demographic. Not that we didn't know any better. From the beginning we argued that Obama's problem was an Appalachian one, hurting him in states like West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and corners of Ohio and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, Obama won working class whites handily in other states like Oregon, pretty much the entire West, and elsewhere.
The issue was more of regional appeal than it was about a broad racial construct. Of course, that was too much "nuance" for the political blowhards. Just about anything usually is. There's a reason they're always so wrong.
They were wrong about Jews becoming more Republican. Remember that one? Or Obama losing women? Or Obama's blackness being a barrier to garnering Latino support? Actually, that last one is particularly funny, because we've been told again and again by the know-nothings that McCain would do well with Hispanics because he was responsive to his state's large Latino population.
That, somehow, was supposed to translate to national strength. It hasn't, of course, with Obama crushing McCain among Latinos. But as it turns out, his own state's Latinos don't like him much (PDF), as this poll of McCain's home county of Maricopa County shows. Maricopa is the fourth largest in the country, with a population of 3.77 million, hosting ove half of Arizona's 6.34 million residents. 29.5 percent of that population is Hispanic. So what does the poll tell us?
In Arizona, the contest for President of the United States between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain could prove to be a dilly and is most likely to be decided by which candidate carries Maricopa county where nearly six out of ten Arizona voters reside and which is generally conceded to be the heartland of Republican strength in the state. Yet here in Senator McCain’s back yard, his lead which was a comfortable 15 to 17 points for most of last and this year, has shrunk significantly.
In late July, a survey of 401 voters in Arizona’s most populous county, McCain’s lead over Obama has narrowed to within five points (43% for McCain to 38% for Obama). As recently as May of this year, McCain led by 53 to 38 percent. Additional ly, among voters still on the fence, but who admit they are “leaning” toward one of the other, the division is similar.
Sounds great! What is helping close that gap?
[E]ven though Latino voters have in the past displayed a tendency to favor Democratic candidates, John McCain has long been able to attract from a quarter to a third of their vote. This appears not to be the case today. Seventy- nine percent of Latinos in this survey say they will vote for Barack Obama while McCain’s share registers at only nine percent.
79-9. In May of this year, it was 59-21. In May of 2007, it was 62-27. Even in his home county, McCain has long lagged with Latinos. Now he's getting positively crushed, unable to even reach double digits amongst that demographic.
We've had the data long enough to refute the bullshit media narrative that Obama would have trouble with Latinos, just like we've had it to refute the bullshit media narrative that Obama would have trouble with working class whites (or women, or Jews, or big state Democrats), but once the blowhards land on a narrative, it's impossible to dislodge them from it. It's quite the phenomenon, actually.
Obama doesn't have a white working class problem outside Appalachia and the south. He doesn't have a Latino problem anywhere, competitive even in the lone Latino Republican bastion of Southern Florida. He doesn't have a woman problem, nor a Jewish problem.
He does has a Republican problem, however. That one is for real.