Can Obama Muster a Counterpunch?

Although most of the big-media analyses will inevitably dwell upon the race and gender gaps between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Super Tuesday, exit poll results underscore a class divide among Democratic and independent voters, which could be the only demographic gap that really matters when Obama or Clinton faces the increasingly likely prospect of John McCain in November.

Consider California, the biggest prize in Tuesday's vote that Clinton won handily. True, the gender and race gaps proved to be real and significant. Blacks across the board voted for Obama. Hispanics and white women favored Clinton. White men leaned heavily toward Obama.

But none those trends are particularly enlightening until one looks at the class differences. Obama got hammered among lower-income voters. Just 33 percent of California voters earning less than $50,000 a year, for instance, chose Obama compared to 60 percent of such voters who picked Clinton.

Obama's tipping point for support in California appears to be an annual income of about $100,000. Among voters earning between $100,000 and $149,000, Obama won 53 percent of the vote, smashing Clinton by a full 10 percentage points.

The class divide was equally wide in other states that Obama lost to Clinton on Tuesday. In Massachusetts, a state that Obama wanted badly to win given his Kennedy endorsements, low-income workers voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. Those earning between $30,000 and $50,000, for example, favored Clinton over Obama by a margin of 57 to 40 percent. But for those earning more than $200,000 a year, Obama had the advantage. Among voters whose highest level of education was high school, Clinton obliterated Obama by a margin of 67 percent to 26 percent.

Those are startling outcomes for the man who could be the nation's first African American president, who may be the first American leader in two generations that could restore the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy to unite the country around racial and economic justice.

Between now and the Democratic convention, Obama has got to bridge the class divide if he hopes to make history. John Edwards tried to make economic justice a central theme of this election, but coming from a boyish-looking millionaire lawyer, his message was a hard sell to many working class people of color.

Hillary Clinton is a privileged white woman who attended Wellesley and Yale Law School. Economic justice was never a central idea of her husband's triangulating presidency, which often seemed to be a Republican regime disguised as a Democratic one. It's curious indeed when the working poor feel more connected to a former First Lady than to an African American man of working-class origins who once served as a community organizer for low-income people in Chicago's housing projects.

But then, American politics often seems to specialize in producing pseudo-reality. Not long ago, the American working classes were hoodwinked by a privileged son of New England whose down-home Texas ways and a potent Republican propaganda machine somehow convinced middle America that his sketchy service in the National Guard was more patriotic and genuine than that of the real Vietnam war hero whom Democrats had nominated for president.

Unless Obama can muster a counterpunch in coming weeks to reveal who he really is and what he stands for beyond vague notions about change, and until he makes economic justice a central theme of his potential presidency rather than niche marketing to the Whole Foods crowd, Clinton will beat him.

And even if he manages to get past Clinton without taking that stand, McCain, the self-styled populist, will demolish Obama, and along with him any chance that America will finally reconnect with the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. or Bobby Kennedy.

Peter Sacks's new book is Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education.

Comments

[jcharliemiller]

The divide is imaginary. Few people are willing to count the early voters. Early voting is what won California. 1.5 million people voted before Barack even really registered in the state. Obama finished the race by 380,000 votes. Let"s assume that those voters who cast when he was polling at less than 30% probably favored Hillary. Likely, it was 2-1 in early voting, if not more. Somehow he ended within 380,000 votes. That means on Election Day itself more people came out to vote for Obama then Clinton. To close the early voting gap on Super Tuesday, he had to at least have got 60 to 65 percent of the voters that day. Eliminate the early voting he wins hands down.

[whswhs]

I think that this "divide" is actually a symptom of another problem, and not in itself the problem for Obama.
The less economically affluent don't have the same access to media as the better off. This mean that the name Clinton is far more recognizable for them than "Obama". And even if they recognize the name, they don't have the same time to invest in getting to know the candidates.
I'd be interested to know if Obama fairs better with less affluent voters in places where he actually had the chance to engage in "retail politics" in. I'd suspect that he does. His background, personality, and message have much more populist appeal than Hillary's

[honeybee49]

Barry O. is a hapa haole from Hawaii who went to private school and then on to Columbia and Harvard. Why would he want to make economic justice a central theme? Po' folks are not his demographic--never were, never will be. My guess is that RFK and MLK, if they had to choose, would hold their noses and vote for Senator Clinton this year. That's because they were politically smart and personally compassionate. You didn't hear them calling good, decent, hardworking people "Bubba" and "downscale voters," or making arrogant assumptions about their motivations, or insulting their native intelligence.

[whswhs]

I think that this "divide" is actually a symptom of another problem, and not in itself the problem for Obama.
The less economically affluent don't have the same access to media as the better off. This mean that the name Clinton is far more recognizable for them than "Obama". And even if they recognize the name, they don't have the same time to invest in getting to know the candidates.
I'd be interested to know if Obama fairs better with less affluent voters in places where he actually had the chance to engage in "retail politics" in. I'd suspect that he does. His background, personality, and message have much more populist appeal than Hillary's

[altohone]

Hmmm.

Obama tied Clinton.

Anybody who had predicted that last year would have been laughed offline.

Your claim is accurate for Obama to put it away, but the evidence thus far does not point to a Hillary win.

The underdog beat the machine to a tie.
Clinton's inevitability has been destroyed, and donors for change seem determined to see Clinton pull a Romney... spend half her fortune only to lose.

[asafishthroughwater]

Bubba (sorry, a new and less offensive name for the class referred to in this piece hasn't appeared yet) has never voted his (or her) self-interest. The fact that there are still Republicans in Congress and we still feel the heel of the TaliBush on our neck is sufficient to make that case. A vote for HRC seems to be a vote for the mind set that gave us NAFTA and the tax write-off for exporting American jobs as well as the repeal of the Glass-Steagel Act that gave us the sub-prime mortgage swamp.

Is HRC to be the half-a-loaf candidate? Is a moderate Republican better than a crazy Republican (either one left fits that category)? It's up to Obama to make the dream powerful again. I'm old enough to remember the first Camelot. The dream was intoxicating and powerful and the days full of promise and hope and maybe the reality would have been, we never found out. I hope the new king would put some starch in his robes before the next joust. A dreamer needs a solid sidekick. Robin and Tonto are occupied so choose a VP now; and choose Bill Richardson before the sun goes down.