Since the 1960s, Democratic nominating contests regularly have come down to a struggle between a candidate who draws support primarily from upscale, economically comfortable voters liberal on social and foreign policy issues in a bi-coastal split, and a rival who relies mostly on downscale, financially strained voters drawn to populist economics and somewhat more conservative views on cultural and national security issues that captures the heartland.
Blue-collar working class Democrats, the rank and file of the party, tend to see elections as an arena for defending their interests and their values, and the upscale voters see them as an opportunity to affirm their interests and their values. Each group finds candidates who reflect those priorities. It is a defend versus affirm dichotomy. That explains the fierce doggedness of Clinton supporters. We are defending the long tradition of the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and we are not going to let go this time.
Democratic professionals often describe this sorting as a competition between upscale “wine track” candidates and blue-collar “beer track” contenders. Another way to express the difference is to borrow from American historian John Milton Cooper Jr.’s telling comparison of the pugnacious Theodore Roosevelt and the idealistic Woodrow Wilson. Cooper described the long rivalry between Republican Roosevelt and Democrat Wilson as a contest between a warrior and a priest. In modern times, the Democratic presidential race has usually pitted a warrior against a priest. I am going to twist Cooper’s phrasing and say this contest is between a warrior and a false prophet. I have voted for the priests before in the interest of the party unity, but to go from priest to false prophets is a bit of a stretch for me.
Obama’s early support is following a pattern familiar from the campaigns of other brainy liberals with cool, detached personas and messages of political reform, from Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to Gary Hart in 1984 to Michael Dukasis in 1988 to Bill Bradley in 2000 to John Kerry in 2004. Like those predecessors, Obama is running strong with well-educated voters but demonstrating much less support among those without college degrees. The other thing that they have in common is that they are all losers ultimately.
At the beginning of the campaign, the Obama camp argued that trend may be exaggerated at the moment by the fact that Obama is better known among better-educated voters, and it would be mitigated by his appeal with African Americans but the white working class would warm up to Obama as they got to know him. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, dismisses these numbers as artifacts of his candidate’s lower name recognition with non-college voters, who aren’t yet as tuned in to the race. Axelrod has said that Obama, through his campaigns for the Illinois state Senate and the U.S. Senate and his experience as a Saul Alinsky-style community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, has demonstrated that he can bond with white working-class voters. But he had ten years to pull off that trick in Chicago against no opposition. It is a much different story on a national stage and in crunch time.
The data from exit polls seems to suggest that reverse is happening. That is Obama is losing support from the white working class. There is so much working against Obama right now, that come November that electoral map is likely to be a sea of bloody red should Obama be the nominee. Among the working class, they more they get to know Obama, the poorer he fares.
On average, Obama and his supporters may have the dollars, but Clinton and her supporters have the sense.
The data is below the fold.
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