Obama's Bitter Lesson

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Unless, of course, the party chooses a nominee who seems alien to the average working stiff. On that score, Obama now has some work to do. He is seen by many downscale voters as the candidate of élites, if not élitist himself. Five days after his comments first surfaced on the internet, a Google search of Snobama was bringing up nearly 4,000 hits--which is ironic, considering that he is the only candidate in the race whose mother once collected food stamps. That's why he has rolled out the endorsements of Bruce Springsteen and the American Hunters and Shooters Association and put more emphasis on what he shares with working-class voters. He talked about the struggles of his single mom, and the fact that he and his wife had to take out student loans to finance their law-school educations--loans they didn't finish paying off until five or six years ago. (Though, of course, that would be Harvard Law School.) "This is a guy who, when he talks about his own life, has lived through some of the same stuff they are living through," says labor leader Anna Burger, the head of the Change to Win federation of unions, which has endorsed Obama. "The real campaign in the fall is going to be around the economy."

Obama himself made the same point over and over. "If John McCain wants to turn this election into a contest about which party is out of touch with the struggles and the hopes of working America, that's a debate I'm happy to have," he said. "I may have made a mistake last week in the words that I chose, but the other party has made a much more damaging mistake in the failed policies they've chosen and the bankrupt philosophy they've embraced for the last three decades."

Yet Obama's tone was defensive and flat, and his answer to a question about whether Clinton should abandon her still unlikely bid for the nomination betrayed how the entire episode has knocked the front runner off his stride. "I'm sure that Senator Clinton feels like she's doing me a great favor," Obama said, "because she's been deploying most of the arguments that the Republican Party will be using against me in November." Which might be enough to make a guy bitter.

The Key to Victory for Both Parties

For decades, the Democratic Party has been slowly losing white working-class voters. In 2004, President Bush beat John Kerry by 34 electoral votes, clinching the key battleground in Ohio. Even a tiny shift among white working-class voters could have changed the outcome

WHERE THEY LIVE ... Percentage of voters in each state defined as white working-class*

... AND WHY THEY'RE CRITICAL These voters are more than half the electorate in 9 of the 10 states where the 2004 election was closest

[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine.]

STATE (ELECTORAL VOTES) WHITE WORKING-CLASS VOTERS STATEWIDE WINNER (MARGIN OF VICTORY) Wisconsin (10) 64% Kerry (0.4%) Iowa (7) 70% Bush (0.9%) New Mexico (5) 34% Bush (1.1%) New Hampshire (4) 60% Kerry (1.4%) Pennsylvania (21) 56% Kerry (2.3%) Ohio (20) 60% Bush (2.5%) Nevada (5) 56% Bush (2.6%) Michigan (17) 59% Kerry (3.4%) Minnesota (10) 58% Kerry (3.5%) Oregon (7) 64% Kerry (3.9%)

*Defined by education, a central determinant of a worker's economic life, to include all whites with less than a four-year college degree. Source: Ruy Teixeira, Brookings Institution