4um: Obama's appeal to working-class whites faltering, polls show

Title: Obama's appeal to working-class whites faltering, polls show
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Published: May 04, 2008
Author: ALAN FRAM
Post Date: 2008-05-13 14:25:40 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 448
Comments: 37

Obama's appeal to working-class whites faltering, polls show

Barack Obama's problem winning votes from working-class whites is showing no sign of going away, and their impression of him is getting worse.

Those are ominous signals as he hopes for strong performances in the coming week in Indiana and North Carolina primaries that would derail the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. Those contests come as his candidacy has been rocked by renewed attention to his volatile former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and by his defeat in last month's Pennsylvania primary.

In an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll in April, 53 percent of whites who have not completed college viewed Obama unfavorably, up a dozen percentage points from November. During that period, the numbers viewing Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain negatively have stayed about even.

The April poll _ conducted before the Pennsylvania contest _ also showed an overwhelming preference for Clinton over Obama among working-class whites. They favored her over him by 39 percentage points, compared to a 10-point Obama lead among white college graduates. Obama also did worse than Clinton among those less-educated voters when matched up against Republican candidate John McCain.

"It's the stuff about his preacher ... and the thing he said about Pennsylvania towns, how they turn to religion," Keith Wolfe, 41, a supermarket food stocker from Parkville, Md., said in a follow-up interview. "I don't think he'd be a really good leader."

Just before the Pennsylvania primary, Obama said many small-town residents are bitter about their lives and turn for solace to religion and guns.

Recent voting patterns underscore Obama's continued poor performance with these voters, who are often pivotal in general election swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

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. That includes Ohio and Pennsylvania, in which working-class whites have favored Clinton by 44 and 41 percentage points respectively.

The AP-Yahoo poll shows less educated whites present a problem to Obama in part because of who they are. Besides being poorer, they tend to be older than white college graduates _ and Clinton has done strongly with older white voters.

Yet political professionals and analysts say more is at play. They blame Obama's problems with blue-collar whites on their greater reluctance to embrace his bid to become the first black president, and his failure to address their concerns about job losses and the battered economy specifically enough.

Terry Madonna, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., said Obama lost among working-class whites in the state because his message of how this generation's time has come did not address their economic needs.

"While it's incredibly motivating and passionate and compelling, it lacks content," Madonna said. "Hillary would come in and relate to them, talk about the specifics of her policy."

Pennsylvania also illustrated the problems racial attitudes among less educated whites are causing Obama.

In exit polls, one in five of the state's white voters who haven't completed college said race was an important factor in choosing a candidate, about double the number of white college graduates who said so. Eight in 10 of them voted for Clinton over Obama, and only about half said they would vote for Obama over McCain in November.

"The scab is pealed back off," Democratic pollster John Anzalone, not working for either presidential candidate, said of the latest attention focused on Wright and Obama's denunciations of him. In video clips of past sermons, Wright has damned the United States for its history of racism and accused the government of spreading the HIV virus to harm blacks.

Obama pollster Cornell Belcher said that while working-class whites have favored Clinton, the fact that huge numbers of them and other voters have participated in Democratic contests boded well for the November election.

"I don't think there's going to be erosion in the fall of a core group of Democratic voters," Belcher said.

While less educated whites tend to vote less frequently than better educated voters, they are important because of their sheer number.

Exit polls show they have comprised three in 10 voters in Democratic contests so far, a group that cannot be ignored in a contest that has seen Obama maintain a slim lead. They made up 43 percent of all voters in the 2004 presidential contest, when they heavily favored President Bush over Democrat John Kerry.

Underlining his need to connect with these voters, Obama has geared some television ads in Indiana toward economic issues. In recent days he has turned to small events, rather than his trademark huge rallies, concentrating on the economy, including lunching with a blue-collar Indiana family while discussing their problems.

He has let cameras record him playing basketball in hopes of connecting with the passionate fans of the sport who populate Indiana and North Carolina.

The findings from the AP-Yahoo News poll are from interviews with 863 Democrats on a panel of adults questioned in November and April. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it free.

The exit poll is based on in-person interviews with more than 36,000 voters in 28 states that have held primaries this year in which both candidates actively competed. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1 percentage point, larger for some subgroups.

___

AP Director of Surveys Trevor Tompson, AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and reporter Beth Fouhy contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS SUBS graf 2 to correct time frame.)

The numbers don't lie and tonight in West Va, the PILES worst fears will be realized; he cannot attract middle class whites. (1 image)

When Adlai Stevenson lost his two elections on the egghead issue, much less of the U.S. population was educated.

To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.

Education during the Stevenson era didn't require mandatory course work in the life and struggles of Che Guevara. Today's eggheads walk with a decided tilt to the left. And I hope Mr. O isn't depending too heavily on the kids showing up. They never fail to fail.

They may not have had as much formal education, but they hadn't lived through fifty years of deliberate dumbing-down either.

Only white guilter wing nuts on the left would ever have swallowed Obamas drivel.

Correct. Had the university professors of the day been the likes of Cornell West and Williams Ayers, our fathers would have put a torch to their ivy walls.

That descriptive word of "formal" has always intrigued me. My education was hard knock type, no one to hold my hand, or kiss my boo boo when I hurt my little self trying to pass a test.

One thing I can brag about tho, my education did not cost the tax payers a damned dime.

An educated lady I know read Obama's books and was deeply disquieted by the fact that he wrote off his white relatives.

She could not fathom that, and it hits rather close to home for her because her two children, half-Chinese, do not look like all that much like her.

I was lucky, I began college in my early 30s, thanks to life getting in the way. I went to CUNY...the Alma Marta of the Rosenbergs, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Lionel Trilling, I even think the ghost of Rosa Luxemburg haunted the place. You missed nothing......

They found the sorry carcass of Rosa floating in the river, we should wish the same fate on Irvings son.

I'd rather his epitaph read, "I could have been a contender if it weren't for the thinkers."

Funny, because I was 30ish too, sitting in class with 20 yr olds and a few older, bored housewives with whom I became almost immediate friends.

After classes they'd gather around to hear me explain why the instructor was attempting to warp our minds with propaganda!

I realized then how easy it would have been to start my own cult there in So Cal! ;)

Is he the large headed lad with the Fox gig, who smiles inappropriately and becomes aroused at the thought of military action?

I can imagine how parents who worked, scrimped and saved for their kids' college felt when the kids came home and explained that Karl Marx was a misunderstood genius!

You prolly knew this...Irving and Gertrude lived across the street from Central Park in an apartment for TEN YEARS, and never once set foot in the park.

My son wiped out of engineering school (because of girls) and it saved him going thru the communist indoctrination.

I drove by a college once and they told me to keep moving, so I make 54 per cent.

Please make your tag line RED as in blood and bigger for the brain dead sheep to read.

I took an Eng class with a communist PhD from Duke named Frank Battaglia. His course was built on conspiracy and we opened w/JFK and the Warren commission. We finished with Teddy at Chappaquiddick. We agreed on nothing and our arguments became legend. We actually had kids from other classes coming to sit in on our class. He allowed intoxicants, so the vino flowed freely. At the end of the class he petitioned the PTB on my behalf to give me a grade of A++. For a way out lefty, he was a decent guy.

I think Professor Terry Madonna's explanation is the most realistic explanation for O's sliding popularity with the working class non-college educated whites than the theory being vigorously promoted by MSM elites and political pundits that this class of voter does not like O because of his intellect or his color.

Although I cannot abide with Hillary's politics, I give her full marks for being a very smart well-educated individual.

Hillary's intellectual gifts and educational credentials are first class and the former qualities, imo, are more impressive than O's. If non-college educated whites were biased against O's education/intellect then they would be equally hostile to Hillary's same assets. But evidently this is not the case. They like Hillary very much.

Also racial prejudice in people often goes hand in hand with gender bias. If O's race was a factor in working class white voters' dislike, this group would likely be averse to voting for Hillary. And once again this is not the case. They like Hillary very much.

To paraphrase what Professor Madonna observes: Obama's economic platform is too vague. Whereas at least Hillary makes an attempt to address specific concerns about job losses and the battered economy. ( although I don't necessarily agree with Hillary's solutions).

Blue collar workers are in a very precarious situation these days. They want to hear a politician empathize with their situation and also to recommend some solutions to the problems they face.

Perhaps the working class non-college educated masses are smarter/have more common sense than the elites give them credit for. These voters see through the smoke and mirrors aura of Obama.

Hillary referred to THEM today on MSNBC as "hard working people." Herbert, an angry black x decades, told the audience that "hard working" was code for white. I guess his logic is that blacks aren't, but I don't want to go there. People I can no longer mention already think I wear a hood and am actively searching for the elusive empty suit.

Geraldine Ferraro put it very bluntly...If Obama were white, he would be a non person.

We uneducated perhaps never trod the Halls of Ivy and are sans any credentials, but God did give us a brain.

In 1950, Dago Red on bum street in Frisco was a dollar a gallon. Towards the end of the month when the thirst was greatest, we would shop there.

This is an excellent point and it shelves the egghead argument. Both she and O are well educated and heeled. The argument can't be that it hurts one and not the other.

Hillary connected in Philly and to a lesser extent Pittsburgh. Philly was a disappointment to O b/c altho it has at least 4 major universities in town, the kids didn't come out in the numbers predicted. The remainder of this state is small town apple kickers (sorry Cyni, I'm one too). In PA it was about the economy and as you said his plan is HOPE, CHANGE then PUNT if needed. In the end, he didn't close the deal and Hillary continues to battle on. I have to give the devil her due; the girl is a fighter.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Here in the Mountain State, where faith, firearms and patriotism are bedrock, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama is failing to connect, trailing in the run-up to today's primary election by 40 points in some polls.

In a state where 16 percent of residents have undergraduate degrees and the median family income is about $12,000 less than the national average, it is no surprise to natives that Mr. Obama, an Ivy Leaguer, is not resonating with their blue-collar culture.

Good golly miss molly, that's Frank!!!! The last I saw him he was in my kitchen, eating leftovers at 3am. I crashed only to wake up to him baking us bread. A total and complete pisser.

I suppose theoretically, had tariffs been instituted 20 years ago (and the border closed) as advocated by Pat Buchanan and other economic nationalists, there might be some manufacturing job or other they could train for.

But that's all gone. It's now down to Wally World and/or "may I take your order please."

“I would give no thought of what the world might say of me, if I could only transmit to posterity the reputation of an honest man.” - Sam Houston

I wonder what majors these “white college graduates” held. Since I fully intend to join the fray with guns blazing, I’ve contacted dozens of engineers that I’ve known in my career thru most of the airspace biggies. I’ve yet to find a single one for O. Hussein, or even to find one that knows an engineer rooting for the boy.

I think some course work in Whiteness: is it Racism? and Cyberfeminism might help your friends see O in a different light.

You don't really think that almost 50% of registered dem hoosiers actually voted for The Magnificent Messiah, do you?

"Barack Obama naturally wants to keep the fight on the high road, the avenue of the familiar. There are few mosques on the high road, and try as he might Mr. Obama, who professes a born-again Christian faith discovered under the unlikely tutelage of a bigoted preacher, has, unfair as it is, yet to persuade small-town America that he's "one of us." Worse, his conversion is a crime in the eyes of traditional Muslims.

"As the son of a Muslim father," writes Edward N. Luttwak in the New York Times, "Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as [he] has written, his father said he renounced his religion." His conversion in Muslim law is a crime worse than murder, and in radical Muslim quarters the punishment is beheading (though certain Muslim moderates say stoning and hanging would suffice). The Secret Service, charged with the senator's safety, has taken due note."