The Candidates
Featured Archives
The AFL-CIO is preparing to spend tens of millions to keep the critical voting block in the fold:
With two celebrity-class candidates, Democrats have seen their presidential contest draw record voter turnout and an influx of Latinos and younger Americans to the party. But some are becoming concerned that the party now risks losing its hold on a more established set of needed supporters: blue-collar workers.
The fears are strong enough that the AFL-CIO today will announce a multimillion-dollar campaign to discredit Republican candidate John McCain among union households and link him to President Bush’s unpopular economic policies.
A separate labor-backed group, the Campaign to Defend America, has launched a television ad portraying McCain as “McSame as Bush” on issues including the Iraq war, economics and energy policy. The spot ends with a picture of the two men embracing.
It is all part of a preemptive effort to stem battleground-state defections by union households and other working-class voters known as Reagan Democrats — swing voters who have been courted by both parties ever since they tipped the balance for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.
“That vote is up for grabs,” said David Bonior, campaign manager for John Edwards’ failed Democratic presidential bid. “We will have to work incredibly hard,” he said, to blunt McCain’s potential appeal to working-class voters, which is based on his status as a war hero and his reputation as a political moderate.
The AFL-CIO became concerned after polls and focus groups found considerable willingness among union members to consider supporting McCain, regardless of which Democrat won the nomination.
Republicans have signaled that they have the Reagan Democrats at the top of their target list. Ken Mehlman, a former GOP national chairman who is informally advising McCain, said the campaign’s blue-collar outreach would attract Reagan Democrats for the same reason the former president did: McCain is seen as frank, a good leader, strong on defense and opposed to tax increases.
Some analysts say the threat of defections to McCain will be particularly acute if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee. In many of this year’s caucuses and primaries, Obama has lost working-class white voters to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. Holding on to those voters in swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania will be one key to the party’s efforts in November against McCain, the presumed GOP nominee.
“The Obama campaign has not been very successful in connecting with middle-aged, older, white working-class voters,” said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster who has done work for the AFL-CIO and is not affiliated with any candidate. “It is very important for them to understand why that is so because those are the kinds of voters who have been swing voters in the last two general elections.”
Democratic voters have shown fairly consistent demographic patterns during the primary-season balloting: Clinton’s strongest support has come from a coalition of lower-income and older voters, while Obama in most states has been strongest among blacks, upscale voters and the young.
Looking toward the general election, labor strategists were alarmed by polls and focus groups of undecided union members that showed McCain doing well in match-ups with either Democratic candidate, said Karen Ackerman, political director of the AFL-CIO.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
And I thought it was the democrats who were so against pre-emptive war?
Ok
It’s been amazing perusing the leftost and dem blogs lately. The Obama and Clinton camps hate each other. Moreso than I saw during the GOP contest, or at least equal to the hatred I saw.
You have Clinton blogs and posters citing Pat Buchanan as the voice of reason and the only guy on MSNBC who makes any sense while they rip Olbermann and Matthews.
You have Kos and other Obama blogs ripping Clinton and Ferraro and saying how she’s destroying the party. Olbermann gave his first ever comment against a dem today and it was against Clinton.
The camps are hardening and there’s still 6 weeks to PA and after that another 6 weeks until the end of the primary season and after that another 12 weeks until the convention where this will be decided(where I would not be surprised at all to see the Supers give it to Hillary).
Basically, we’re in for another 6 months of the democrats destroying one another while McCain unites the party and makes sure he gets the at least 85-90% support among Republicans that he’ll need. The independents will get upset at both of them and flock to the Maverick.
Another 6 months of this. Could anything be better?
March 13th, 2008 at 12:13 am
The battle between the Dems is like a Christmas miracle in an election year where I thought we had no chance.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:00 am
The Clinton-Obama battle could end more abruptly than we expect and its effects be less than we expect. Let’s take it one step at a time and keep the battle going. Next step: Florida needs to revote and be won by Clinton.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Great find, Kavon, and I agree with the assessment.
But Obama’s problems with Reagan Democrats may be worse than indicated in this article. From what I gather, the Obama campaign is fueled by “latte liberals” and college kids, meaning they aren’t don’t generally share the same lifestyle and outlook as Reagan Democrats. I’m not sure they know HOW to connect. Furthermore, the Obama campaign may be so enraptured with their ability to bring new people in the front door, they may not be watching all the folks leaving out the back door.
In 1972 millions of Democrats who wore boots and hard hats voted for Nixon. These “Nixon Democrats” found they had far more in common with Republicans that year than the sandal wearing, long haired college kids that were the archtype of the McGovern campaign.
McCain is well suited to win the Reagan Democrats for the reasons stated, and in a head to head with Obama, he will crush Obama among white, lower middle income voters.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Look longer term, what impact could an Obama nomination have on “Roosevelt Democrats?” Certainly, the numbers of people who actually remember the Great Depression is getting less and less every year, but there are many younger Democrats who share a common outlook with the old Roosevelt Democrats.
They are socially conservative, even if that social conservatism isn’t always manifested politically. Economically, they want some protection for “the little guy” (though not socialism) and “good government” that reflects common sense (such as balanced budgets). Culturally, I think Obama could drive many of these people away from the Democratic party, and not because he is black. He is socially about as liberal as you can get (acting to legally protect infanticide), and culturally, he is more Princeton than Peoria. For all his drive to explore his “blackness” (such as his seperatist church), Obama is a pretty run of the mill limosene liberal.