The Washington Post reports on Obama’s persistent problems with key segments of the Democratic Party. This one is especially odd since Senator Casey did after all endorse Barack Obama before the Pennsylvania primary. The endorsement did not help Obama and it is not likely to help in a general election. The issue is really values.
It’s the transformation of a group of voters we might call Casey Democrats, after the late Robert P. Casey Sr., governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995.
Like Casey, these voters — blue-collar and religious, often Catholic — are liberal on economic issues but conservative on cultural ones. Where they once looked to union leaders and their fellow union members for political guidance, they now look to their religious leaders and fellow churchgoers. And in the last decade, to the dismay of Democratic strategists, they’ve been voting for Republican presidential candidates. According to Democratic pollster and strategist Stan Greenberg, they made up the 10 percent of white Catholics who identify with the Democrats but didn’t vote for Sen. John F. Kerry for president in 2004. And if Sen. Barack Obama can’t do better with the Casey Democrats, his presidential bid may fare no better than Kerry’s.
Senator Obama has quite the conundrum and it is one of his own making. In trying to be all things to all people, a lot of people are catching on that he is rather inconsistent on the issues. That allows his opponents to pick and choose how to paint him. Last night on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Mark Shields noted that Obama has developed a perception problem with voters who did not vote in the primaries but that are likely to vote in the general election. He cited a focus group done in Charlottesville, Virginia where more than half of the group held a negative opinion of Obama saying their values did not match up.
The Washington Post article adds:
In dealing with Casey Democrats, the national party faces two temptations. One is to ignore them. The party had planned to target voters in more libertarian Mountain West states this fall. But with Arizona Sen. John McCain the presumptive GOP nominee, Democrats are less likely to flip states such as Nevada and Colorado. The second temptation is to assume that Casey Democrats will support the Democratic ticket because Obama has been endorsed by figures such as Sen. Bob Casey Jr., the late Pennsylvania governor’s son. But Casey’s endorsement failed to prevent Obama’s nine-point loss to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary last month.
Winning states like Colorado and New Mexico doesn’t even begin to make up for Pennsylania and Ohio. The second assumption is plainly suicidal since again it’s values that keep these Casey Democrats from supporting Obama. Actually the answer is quite simple. It’s about the Map not the Math. If the Democratic Party’s leadership wants to win in November, the clear and logical choice at the top of ticket is Hillary Clinton. She can win where he can’t.