Barack Obama’s decisive 16-percentage-point victory in the Oregon primary gave him a majority of the pledged delegates at the upcoming Democratic convention, but its big significance might have been in showing that he can appeal to white working-class voters.
Hillary Clinton’s claim that the African-American senator can’t draw the votes of white blue-collar people who the Democrats will need to win in November would be demolished by a big Obama win in Oregon, Jeff Alworth wrote on the BlueOregon blog the day before the election:
“For months, a meme has been developed by lazy pundits who say Obama has lost the blue-collar white vote. Obama got killed in West Virginia, true enough, but since when did West Virginians stand in as representative of all white voters?
“Enter Oregon. Forget the People’s Republic of Portland – the Beaver State is plenty hardscrabble. Our median income is nearly $2,000 below the national average, our per-capita income is lower than the national average, we have more people in poverty, and we regularly have higher unemployment. And of course, we’re bone white – 90.5%, 10th whitest in the nation.
“Come tomorrow night, Obama will have notched another primary thanks to the broad support of whites, and pundits will be reminded that Obama did well with that demographic in Connecticut, Maryland, Missouri, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
“And let’s not forget the 75,000 who showed up [Sunday in Portland] to watch him speak. The mostly white crowd provided an undeniable visual for those who want to pigeonhole Obama. How to reconcile the idea that he is unpalatable to whites when he can – as a primary-election candidate – draw one of the biggest crowds in recent political memory?”
Blogging on the Huffington Post this morning, Sam Stein laid out the numbers:
“White voters – the only ones in the exit polls because the state is so homogeneous – went to [Obama] in overwhelming numbers. In fact, every age group, except those older than 60, preferred Obama to … Clinton. Obama, in addition, won the majority of voters whose total family incomes where less than $50,000 as well as all income groups, save for the smallest: $15,000 to $29,999. Union households, moreover, went to Obama by a margin of 60 percent to 37 percent.”
Perhaps just as interesting, Obama carried not only the urban counties around Portland, Eugene and Salem, but also seven counties east of the Cascades, including Deschutes and Jefferson.
Expect the Clintonistas to tout Hillary’s big victory in Kentucky yesterday as evidence that Obama still can’t appeal to blue-collar whites – but, just like West Virginians, Kentuckians are hardly representative of such voters nationwide.
UPDATE: The Northwest Progressive site has come up with a map showing each candidate’s percentage of the vote in each Oregon county. “There is one notable trend – the rural areas where Barack Obama spent
time campaigning in gave him more votes (for example, in Pendleton and
Bend),” the authors comment. “This is very encouraging news because it means that
Obama can win people over if he simply ventures off the beaten path.”
This article appears in May 22-28, 2008.
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What a joke of an argument… that Oregon voters are representative of the “white working class voters” that are referred to as the critical voting block by polls and pundits. That group of blue-collar workers is the one that belongs to the states that actually carry weight in the electoral college come November. This group of white blue-collar voters in Oregon and the greater PacNW is different, and always votes differently–far to the left of the white blue-collar voters in the electoral college powerhouses in the midwest and eastern regions of the country. Just because we’re poor, uneducated, and white, doesn’t mean that we are the same as the we are the same as the poor, uneducated, white of states that will decide the election.
JB: I’m not sure I buy the premise that Oregon blue-collar voters are that far to the left of blue-collar voters in other states. And what about blue-collar voters in Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin and Missouri — are they all far-lefties too? Besides, there are hardly any ideological or policy differences between Obama and Clinton, so it’s tough for me to believe people are rejecting Obama because he’s “too far left.” I suspect the rejection of Obama by white working-class voters in KY and WV has little to do with ideology and a lot to do with good old-fashioned racism.
I wasn’t referring to KY and WVa. Those also aren’t electoral college powerhouses. I was referring to states such as Ohio and Penn. Ones that will make a difference in the general election. My point was that the presumption in the article that carrying oregon in the primary (a state that consistently votes far to left of the rest of the country and votes differently than those must win rust-belt powerhouses) somehow implied that the long-identified constituency problems he faces simply don’t exist was silly.
If those constituency problems didn’t exist for Obama, then Clinton would have been out of the race a long time ago. Again, this is referring to the big electoral college states, not KY and WVa.
Also, I didn’t say racism wasn’t a factor in KY or in any other state. This was about the ridiculous notion in the article that carrying Oregon meant anything at all in regards to Obama’s blue-collar appeal. A laughable notion.
Okay, in a Democratic primary you have (mainly) registered Democrats choosing between two Democrats. In the general election you will have Democrats, Republicans and independents choosing between a Democrat and a Republican. Hillary’s whole “Obama-is-not-electable” argument rests on the premise that because blue-collar Democrats voted for her over Obama in the primary, they will vote for the Republican (McCain) over Obama in the general election. THAT is what I call a laughable notion — unless we’re to believe that masses of white Democratic voters won’t support their party’s nominee simply because he’s a black man, and I hope we’ve moved beyond that.
Ohio may be a toss-up as it was in 2004 (although in view of how badly the GOP brand has been damaged by the Smirky McChimp presidency, I doubt it). Pennsylvania has gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 and I see no reason to believe it will be in play this year. Ditto California, New York, Michigan, Illinois (Obama’s home state), New Jersey and Massachusetts. Texas will not be in play because it’s rock-solid Republican. So Hillary’s “only-I-can-win-the-big-states” argument is moot.
BTW, Hillary WAS out of the race long ago. She just refused to admit it.
Well, then. Maybe that was the argument that should have been made in the post, not that Oregon’s Obama primary victory had some broader significance to the general election as it relates to the blue-collar constituency of the Democratic party. The original blog post tried to make this point.
Although some of what you say is accurrate, it doesn’t challenge my single point.
I wasn’t criticizing the author’s political beliefs or ideas on who is the better candidate. My point criticizes a shoddily constructed article, from a critical perspective, not a political one.
JB, you say that Oregon “consistently votes far to left of the rest of the country and votes differently than those must win rust-belt powerhouses.” I would like to see some data to back up those claims. If you made such a statement about Massachusetts or Vermont I wouldn’t dispute it, but when you make it about Oregon I’m skeptical.
Be skeptical then. If you want to see data, then search it out. I’m confident enough about Oregon’s voting history and the demographics of Oregon’s Democratic Party, which is much more rooted in the Willamette Valley in the High Desert.
But what I don’t get, is why you keep avoiding commenting on my original dis on this article… which is what I keep coming back to… where a very shoddy argument was put out there by “The Eye”…. this being the argument that Obama winning the primary in Oregon had some kind of relevance in the general election as to whether he can carry the white blue collar democrats that have been shunning him many states.
The Eye is the one throwing around the flimsy assumptions, not me.
“Be skeptical then. If you want to see data, then search it out.”
LOL! Translation: “I got nothin’.” That’s what I expected.
You say the original argument was “shoddy” but you have nothing to refute it with but an unsupported assertion that white blue-collar voters in Oregon are far to the left of their counterparts in other states.
Dismissed.
whatever. You still won’t answer the original criticism.
For what it’s worth — which at this stage of the game probably isn’t much — SurveyUSA just came out with a poll showing Obama holding a 9-point lead over McCain in Ohio. The same poll shows an Obama-Edwards ticket beating a McCain-Romney, McCain-Huckabee or McCain-Lieberman ticket by 12 to 13 points.
Frankly, in view of what a disaster the Bush presidency has been, I think virtually ANY Democratic candidate would beat McCain in a landslide.