Obama in Rural White America

Senator Obama in a Tavern in Florida

With the US economy continuing into a downward spiral, Pres. Bush's popularity still at an all-time low, it would seem natural that voter's would be going for a Democrat in the upcoming US presidential elections this November. 

Yet in spite of Obama's eloquence and charm, polls conducted during the early periods of the campaign showed that Obama was really behind white voters, especially those who were not college-educated. Most people would attribute this to America's racism and their fear of voting for a black president.

The New York Times' Matt Bat in an October 19, 2008 article called "Working for the Working Class Vote" (full article available here) shares his experience being with Obama in his recent campaign trail in rural Virginia to court white voters.   

He starts his article by describing Obama's weakness to the blue collar white male: 

 

Given the fact that he is not, in fact, a white male, Obama would seem to face an even-less-forgiving landscape among white-male voters. While voters overall give Obama the advantage over John McCain when asked which candidate is better equipped to navigate these tumultuous economic times, Gallup polls throughout the summer and into the fall consistently showed McCain with a double-digit lead among white men who haven’t been to college.           

The author then talks about how Obama sees this as being more than just race. It was in fact an issue of cultural values. Since rural Americans have been feeling that they are gradually being phased out by mainstream America, it is natural that they would have reservations with a candidate that the McCain campaign has dubbed as an elitist. This was best exemplified when Obama was misquoted in a San Francisco fundraiser as saying "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." 

What Obama in fact was trying to say is that urban Democrats are viewed as being snub elitists who condescendingly view their rural counterparts as "getting bitter and cling to guns or religion" during economic difficulties, when they should work towards showing them that they all share the same values and concerns. 

  

"Bittergate": Obama in a San Francisco fundraiser  

In was for this reason that Senator Obama was campaigning not only in battleground swing states but also traditional Republican states as well. In visiting towns such as Lebanon,  where a Democrat hasn't campaigned since 1976, he was at least taking the first step of being there and showing that he was not so different from them.

In spite of Obama's low poll ratings in Virginia, the author argues that there should be a distinction between race being a determining factor vs it merely a factor among many issues that voters are concerned with:   

"No one should be surprised to learn that racial stereotypes exist, particularly among lower-income and less-educated white men, or that such stereotypes affect the way voters see Obama. The more important question is not whether race is a factor in people’s votes but whether it is a determinative factor — that is, whether Obama’s being black is the disqualifying fact for white voters that it might have been 20 years ago or whether it has now been reduced to one of those surmountable obstacles that any candidate has to overcome".

Senator Obama then expounds on the issue of race and being different. 

“I’m not making an argument that the resistance is simply racial. It’s more just that I’m different in all kinds of ways. I’m different even for black people. I went through similar stuff when I ran against Bobby Rush on the all-black South Side of Chicago. It’s like: ‘Who is this guy? Where’d he come from?’ ”. 

Although I am not familiar with US politics, I find this article interesting in that it refutes the simplistic claims of some people that Obama will lose this presidential campaign on the basis of being a Black candidate. I wouldn't hide that I am a big fan of Obama but I do agree with the author's argument that Obama is not addressing white rural Americans' racism but rather fear that their rural values will be taken for granted by a candidate who seem so different from themselves. In spite of the McCain campaign's portrayal of Obama as an out-of-touch elitist, Obama is pushing back into traditional red states, showing that he is after all not so different from them.