Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, specializing in polling of electoral battleground states, writes for the Wall Street Journal that Barack Obama’s problem with white voters is not so much about his racial background than his party:
Neither Jimmy Carter nor Bill Clinton, the last Democrats to occupy the Oval Office since then, won a majority of white voters. Mr. Clinton came relatively close in 1996 and might have done so in 1992 had Ross Perot not been in the race. But focusing on those near misses overlooks the larger point: Sen. Obama, the son of a white mother and black father, could lose this election badly and still outdo the very pale  Sen. George McGovern in 1972, former Vice President Walter Mondale in 1984, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988 and possibly Sen. John Kerry in 2004 – among white voters.
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For those voters, especially ones without college degrees, the fact that Sen. Obama is black may not be as much a disqualifier as his background as a Democrat from the Frost Belt with no national security or executive experience and a voting record judged by the nonpartisan National Journal as the Senate’s most liberal during 2007.
Regular pw readers know this is particularly true of the white male vote. Inasmuch as the Democratic dilemma of the white working-class voter played out in primaries encompassing the Appalachians, a Newsweek piece from Steve Tuttle — who hails from Appalachia — is instructive:
Well, look who’s laughing now. In this strangest of political seasons, Appalachia, the last forgotten place in America, suddenly matters. Never mind Florida and Michigan. In a close election come November, the difference between President McCain and President Obama could come down to me and my people: a bunch of ornery, racist, coal-minin’, banjo-pickin’, Scots-Irish hillbillies clinging to our guns and religion on the side of some Godforsaken, moonshine-soaked ridge in West Virginia.
For all the talk of running DNC Chair Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy,†Barack Obama’s campaign does not seem to be targeting states like West Virginia and Kentucky. Indeed, Camp Obama has even downplayed Ohio on occasion. If the race ends up close, people will look back and wonder whether spending money in states like Alaska was a good idea. On the other hand, McCain may hand blue-collar voters in Ohio to Obama, in which case it probably won’t matter.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Fuckin’ racists.
If PUMA holds up and BHO the Baby Killer gets some decent play among observant Catholics, then the good Senator Obama (check rate card for special deals for slumlords) may have trouble every where but MA and IL. That is, if the good people of Massachusetts don’tistake him for Duval and reflexively vote for McCain in retaliation.
I’d go with “Ohio River Valley” over Appalachia as the descriptor. I doubt he’l take more than a few counties in the whole drainage basin.
While we’re investigating the factions who’ll “believe anything”, let’s not forget those people that watched two planes slam into the twin towers, but are sure it was “controlled detonations from the gov’t” that brought down the towers.
You won’t see these people called nutbags, and the reason is that it is comprised by almost the entire democratic base.
The idea that the white Perot voters would have gone to Clinton is laughable.
In making the remarks about rural people clinging to guns and religion behind closed doors to his wealthy San Francisco donor base Obama was actually using white Southerners as a bete noire in a kind of reverse Southern strategy. The Left claims that Nixon and Reagan used coded appeals to white Southerners, playing on their dislike of blacks. Obama seems to be using coded appeals to Latte liberals, playing on their dislike of rednecks.
Obama needs to reach out to Southerners and Appalachians. He should stop his motorcade some day and head on into a Cracker Barrel for breakfast.
If he wants breakfast at Cracker Barrel he should order the french toast — they do french toast much better than waffles.