Clinton and Obama grapple for working class votes
By Jerry Zremski - News Washington Bureau Chief
Updated: 05/06/08 9:29 AM
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- Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks at a town hall-style meeting held at Cree Inc., a manufacturer of semiconductors in Durham, N.C., Monday, May 5, 2008.
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MERRILLVILLE, Ind. — Two days after climbing into the back of a pickup truck in search of blue-collar votes in North Carolina, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday made herself at home in front of a fire truck in this town of 31,000 Hoosiers in the industrial northwestern corner of the state.
Meanwhile, 268 miles to the south, Sen. Barack Obama made his way from a construction site to the Evansville Labor Temple. Like Clinton, he was in search of what has been an elusive segment of the electorate for him: working-class whites.
So ended the run-up to the latest Super Tuesday, which features primaries today in Indiana and North Carolina, where voters will select nearly half of the remaining elected delegates in the marathon campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
It has been a campaign in which, as Los Angeles political consultant Bill Carrick said, “demographics is destiny.”
For four months now, through countless twists and turns, Clinton, of New York, has won the working-class states, while her opponent from Illinois has cleaned up in places with big populations of blacks and white-collar whites.
The pundits and the polls predict that today’s contests will follow that pattern, with Clinton, who would be the first woman president, narrowly winning Indiana, and Obama, who would be the first African-American president, taking North Carolina by a healthy margin.
But with gas prices skyrocketing and Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., dominating the airwaves, Clinton might be able to grab an even larger-than-usual share of the white working-class vote — and perhaps exceed expectations in both states.
Clinton spent Monday trying to make that happen. After morning events in North Carolina, Clinton flew to Backed by Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana and a fire truck with a dozen uniformed firefighters in Merrillville, Clinton lauded small-town fire companies as part of “the real heart and soul of America.” Decrying higher prices for gasoline and food, she said: “I do see you, and I do hear you. I believe you are doing the best you can under difficult circumstances. We’re going to get in there and change those circumstances.” Obama mixed with a crowd of bricklayers and other construction workers in Evansville, a city of 118,000 in the state’s southwest corner, before flying to North Carolina and visiting a diner and a coffee shop in Durham. He was set to return to the Hoosier State for a late-night rally in Indianapolis. “This is going to be a tight election here in Indiana; every poll shows a dead heat. We need every single vote,” he said in Evansville. “You guys are pretty persuasive. I need you to tell your membership this is something worth fighting for and they need to come out and vote. And vote for me.” Both campaigns consider Indiana the more competitive of the two states. That’s why both candidates have spent more time here in the last two weeks, even though it has only 72 delegates at stake, compared with 115 in North Carolina. The two states loom large because there are only 404 delegates yet to be chosen in the primary season. Obama has a 138-delegate lead and is 279.5 short of securing the nomination. The race ultimately will be decided by the uncommitted 300 or so superdelegates, but those party leaders will be looking to Indiana and North Carolina for signals. Most importantly, they will be watching Obama’s standing with blue-collar voters. Although Obama has struggled to win them over in previous primaries, they will be among the key swing voters in the November general election against the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Clinton leads in Indiana by an average of about 5 points in recent polls, according to Real-ClearPolitics.com, and experts attribute that largely to the nature of the state’s Democrats. African-Americans make up a slightly smaller share of the population here than nationwide, and Democrats are concentrated in blue-collar areas in the north, in Indianapolis and in the culturally conservative southern part of the state. “It always struck me from the beginning that Clinton had to be favored, given my outdated faraway understanding of my fellow Hoosiers,” said Indiana native Robert D. McClure, a political scientist at Syracuse University. Clinton has dominated in states with racial demographics like Indiana’s. Democratic author and blogger David Sirota noted that Obama has won states with very small black populations, as well as large ones, while losing those where blacks make up between 6 and 17 percent of the populace. Sirota calls this the “race chasm,” and Indiana falls right into it, with the black population at 8.9 percent. He argues that racial politics is a key factor in such states and that the black population there is just too small to offset it. North Carolina, on the other hand, has a black population of 21.7 percent, about 9 points above the national average. “It appears Barack Obama will weather the storm in North Carolina,” said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling of Raleigh. “Hillary Clinton has certainly been able to make inroads as she has contested the state hard, but North Carolina’s demographics make this an almost impossible state for her to win.” Nevertheless, Clinton’s resolute focus on the economy and Obama’s recent struggles appear to have moved voters in her direction in both states. Some early polls showed Obama with a slight lead in Indiana, but now they almost all lean Clinton’s way. “Her television commercials have done a much better job addressing the No. 1 issue: the economy,” said Andy Downs of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Downs said Clinton has helped her cause by relentlessly pushing a summertime holiday from the federal gasoline tax. “I want the oil companies to pay the gas tax this summer, and he [Obama] wants you to pay it,” she told the crowd that filled the firehouse in Merrillville. “He says it will save people just, like, $20. But for a lot of people, $20 is something.” Obama agrees with the large number of economists who say that cutting the gas tax this summer wouldn’t cause a meaningful cut in prices at the pump. “It’s a stunt,” Obama said in Evansville. “It’s what Washington does.” The gas tax has also proved to be an issue in North Carolina, as has a matter the candidates don’t routinely discuss on the stump: the controversy over Wright’s incendiary statements. Obama once led by upwards of 20 points in North Carolina polls, but his lead there has been dropping quickly — and many blame Wright’s recent bellicose media appearances. “It apparently has had quite a bit of an impact,” said Kerry Haynie, a political scientist at Duke University. “It’s part of an ongoing trend we’ve seen where Obama’s support among working-class whites continues to decline.” Obama’s struggles with working-class whites helped fuel Clinton’s comeback victories in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but political pros doubt she will be successful enough to change the overall dynamic of the race by winning twice today. More likely, today will end in a split decision. A press pool report from Nia Henderson of Newsday, who was with Obama in Evansville, was included in this report.
