Obama and the Blue Collar Voter. Is it All About the Beer?

2008-05-07
By Eric Easter

Early on Tuesday evening during coverage of the North Carolina primary, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC interrupted Chris Matthews with breaking news: Senator Barack Obama had been spotted in a North Carolina bar  - ordering a Pabst Blue Ribbon. How’s that for white middle class connection? It doesn’t get any red, white and bluer than a frosty can of PBR (though he took it in a glass).

But by that time the beer was unnecessary. Minutes later North Carolina was called for Obama by a landslide. He could have saved his gut and had the Heineken Light he really wanted.

If it was not clear after Obama’s wins in places like Kansas, Mississippi and Utah, this last win in North Carolina and the very close call in Indiana are clear signs that, despite the mainstream media’s attempt to create artificial roadblocks in the way of white support for Obama, the candidate has still managed to defy convention . You don’t win those victories on the backs of the black vote alone. At least some of that had to come from white blue collar workers, but probably not enough to take him through the general election.

So does Obama really need to bowl poorly, drink skunky beer and roll up his sleeves to capture white middle class voters as the pundits suggest? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean he can make the mistake of not reaching out to them.

We peg blue collar white men into a one dimensional box unfairly. It’s not a done deal that they’ll go McCain’s way if Obama wins. As Jesse Jackson’s 1988 race showed, those voters are a complicated lot.  Even given Jackson’s aggressively Black-focused past, leaders of predominantly white unions that represent coal miners, postal workers, Federal employees and hospital workers were among his strongest and most loyal supporters.

Jackson drank no beer, hadn’t pumped his own gas in decades, passed up anything even close to ethnic food in favor of fried chicken and rarely loosened his tie. But still he connected. Not because he tried to fit in and become something he wasn’t, but because he understood where poor and middle class white folk were coming from - and more importantly he understood their interests. Obama needs to take a page from that playbook.

That means taking the Iraq War out of the realm of foreign policy and focusing on its continued impact on families. He must hate the war, love the warriors and be open to going to another war if necessary, all in one breath. He needs to focus again on that white resentment he spoke of in Philadelphia, but relating it to jobs and education instead of race. And  - Pat Buchanan is right on this one – express his unabiding love for this country.

At this point he has little choice but to reach out. The remaining primaries include West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota.  There is no more black vote to be reckoned with. If Obama needs practice for the general election, these next few states are the time to hone his message to that blue collar worker. And of the states remaining, West Virginia may provide his most significant opportunity.

Some say Obama is likely to lose West Virginia by as much as 20 percentage points. But unlike every other prognosticator I’ve heard, I wouldn’t necessarily concede West Virginia to Hillary Clinton.

People say New Jersey gets a raw deal with jokes, but West Virginia gets even worse. The hillbilly, inbred, moonshining, snake handling stereotypes associated with West Virginia  are not only unfair, but can actually be found a lot more in its neighboring states, Tennessee and Kentucky. You can pretty much put Kentucky in the W box for Clinton.

West Virginia on the other hand has grown increasingly cosmopolitan, partly because of its new status as an affordable bedroom community for federal workers priced out of DC and Virginia. And the place where John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering has a more complex and progressive racial history than it is given credit for.  More importantly the problems of rural West Virginians closely mirror those of the inner city neighborhoods Obama worked in south side Chicago. Because of that, the state provides a unique chance for Obama to visibly show what he’s been saying in his speeches - that across race and ethnicity, many of our problems are all the same.

If he works hard for it, Obama could have a legitimate shot at an upset there. But “work hard for it” is the operative phrase. If he plays a West Virginia campaign smartly, aggressively (and humbly) he has a chance to put a modern twist on Robert Kennedy’s legendary trip to Appalachia in a way that would connect him with the imagery of hope that he needs to recapture and embody.

It could be just the opportunity he needs to finally break through that last wall of white doubt.

Eric Easter is Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing, Inc. He writes about politics, culture and technology for ebonyjet.com