It’s Time to Talk About White Working-Class Democrats — Without Fear of False Accusations of ‘Playing the Race Card’

(Mr. Davis is a longtime supporter and fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s, D-N.Y., presidential campaign. These comments are his own and do not represent Sen. Clinton’s campaign.)

There they go again.

Another completely false charge of Hillary Clinton “playing the race card.”

Sen. Clinton recently quoted from an Associated Press article that described the indisputable fact that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has shown political weakness among white working-class voters. And the media stampede began: The pundits and Obama surrogates pounced and accused her of interjecting race into the campaign.

That is as much a false and unfair charge as the prior examples of largely media-created misreporting that led to Sen. Clinton and President Clinton being falsely accused of “playing the race card” in December 2007-February 2008 prior to Super Tuesday. (See my blog last week.) http://pundits.digital-release.digital-release.thehill.com/2008/05/05/the-media-created-big-lie/

In 1980, many white, working-class Democrats — the core of the original FDR Democratic coalition — voted for Ronald Reagan and not only helped produce a national landslide in the presidential election but also initiated what came to be a daunting new Republican majority coalition that lasted for 12 years. That new majority swept over Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988. These white, working-class voters — conservative on cultural and values issues — came to be known as “Reagan Democrats.” And they were voting against liberal, white Democratic presidential candidates, not an African-American one. Discussing the reasons why and what to do about it was not “playing the race card.”

In 1992, and again in 1996, Bill Clinton found the answer. By emphasizing economic issues and talking to, rather than talking down to, these white working-class and rural voters on cultural and values issues, he won many of them back without sacrificing his commitment to civil rights and economic justice for minorities.

The result: Clinton was the first Democrat since FDR to be elected to two terms as president. Then, in the elections of 2000 and 2004, Democrats lost twice to George W. Bush, in large part due to renewed weakness among these white blue-collar voters in states such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and New Hampshire.

So when Sen. Clinton recently referred to the AP story, she was focusing on the same problem Democrats faced in the 1980s. And she was addressing the right question — a non-racial one — not only for the Democratic Party’s future but for Sen. Obama if he should become the Democratic Party nominee: How does the party get back these white Reagan Democrats needed to defeat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)?

Ducking West Virginia and Kentucky

Signs that the Obama campaign may be too dismissive of the need to worry about white working-class Democrats might be seen by Sen. Obama’s decision to begin a victory lap prematurely — and, specifically, to write off West Virginia and Kentucky in the next two important Democratic primaries.

These are surely two states where there are heavy concentrations of blue-collar Democrats who are prime potential for becoming “McCainocrats.”

What does it tell these voters when Sen. Obama’s campaign preferred to send him all the way to Oregon to find a friendly and affluent college-student audience — while flying over coal miners and economically down-and-out families in the towns and rural areas of Kentucky and West Virginia?

Sunday’s New York Times may provide one answer. According to the Times, the Obama campaign has not targeted West Virginia and Kentucky as battleground states should Sen. Obama be the nominee — at least not yet. Why is that? Bill Clinton carried both states in 1992 and 1996. But George Bush won back many of the Reagan Democrats who live there in large numbers and carried both of these states in 2000 and 2004.

Yet in the latest April 11 Survey USA poll in Kentucky, Sen. Clinton is running in a statistical tie with Sen. McCain — while Sen. Obama is down 34 percent! That margin will get bigger, if that is possible, if Sen. Obama is the nominee and the people of Kentucky see themselves written off by the senator who didn’t even bother to campaign seriously for their votes during the race for the Democratic nomination.

Battleground States: Polls Show Clinton Stronger Than Obama

Here are other recent polling data from most of the key battleground states that should be noted by the Democratic Party’s superdelegates —showing, quite dramatically, that Sen. Clinton is a stronger general-election candidate than Sen. Obama in these crucial states:

* In Ohio, Rasmussen’s May 1 poll has Sen. Clinton up 10 percent and Sen. Obama in a dead heat (down 1 percent) with Sen. McCain.

* In Florida, Rasmussen’s April 14 poll showed Sen. Clinton in a statistical dead heat with Sen. McCain (plus 1 percent), while Sen. Obama was down 15 percent. (The May 1 Quinnipiac poll has Sen. Clinton plus 8 percent and Sen. Obama down 2 percent within margins of error.)

* In Missouri, as of the May 8 Rasmussen poll, Sen. Clinton is in a statistical dead heat with Sen. McCain (minus 2 percent) while Sen. Obama is down 6 percent. (The April 17 Survey USA poll similarly shows Sen. Clinton plus 1 percent, within margin of error, while Sen. Obama is down a significant 8 percent margin.)

* And as of April 13, according to the Survey USA/WBZ TV poll, in Massachusetts — the most reliably Democratic state in presidential contests in the last 40 years (e.g., the only state to vote for George McGovern in 1972) — Sen. Obama was surprisingly running in a statistical dead heat against Sen. McCain (plus 2 percent) while, in the same sample, Sen. Clinton was ahead by 15 percent.

Of all the results that suggest Sen. Obama could have a serious general-election problem — mainly caused by weakness among white working-class Democrats — the most telling was his failure, at least as of mid-April, to be ahead of McCain by the kind of margin Sen. Clinton was in Massachusetts, one of the bluest of all blue states.

The Red States — Not in Play?

Meanwhile, as to Sen. Obama’s campaign’s argument that he puts more “red states” in play, take a look at the New York Times’s map of the Obama “target” states. You won’t find many “red” states — certainly not Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, etc., the very states that the Obama campaign carried in the Democratic Party caucuses, with an average of 4 percent turnout, and touted at the time as evidence that he could appeal to Republicans in the general election.

Even red state Kansas appears to have been written off by the Obama campaign, according to the Times map. This appears to be so even though Sen. Obama was endorsed by Kansas’s Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius, and the Obama campaign has in the past strongly implied that Kansas would be “in play.”

Maybe the reason is that the latest Survey USA poll in mid-April shows Sen. McCain defeating Sen. Obama in Kansas by 17 percent — about the same margin as Sen. Clinton.

Even in Virginia, which the Obama campaign touts as “in play” and is included as such in the New York Times map, Sen. Obama was down to Sen. McCain, as of mid-April, by 8 percent.

Lesson Learner?

It is in this context that Sen. Clinton’s comment to the AP should be understood. She was quoting a published fact that superdelegates should consider before making a final decision.

Perhaps the Obama campaign will learn a lesson similar to the one they apparently learned from the Rev. Wright issue: Better to confront difficult issues sooner rather than later.

If Obama becomes the nominee, his campaign will be better served if they begin addressing now the senator’s obvious difficulties in winning substantial support from white working-class Democrats. That would be far better than “flying over” those difficulties and making believe that they do not exist — or worse, attacking the messenger and her motives rather than solving the problem.