Obama Revolution: Texas and Ohio Super Tuesday 2

by Christopher Tidmore

The most recent polls show Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a statistical tie going into what has been termed Super Tuesday II tomorrow. The Ohio Plain Dealer put Clinton at 47% and Obama at 43%, with a 4% margin of error, and surveys by the Houston Chronicle over the weekend show Obama with 46% and Clinton with 45%.

Statistically, on surface it would seem that the Illinois Senator still has problems connecting with large parts of the working class and Hispanic voters that still turn to the former First Lady—and could abandon Obama in November.

No so, says political consultant, and registered Republican, Sidney Arroyo. In an interview last week, he not only predicted Obama would win Texas, but stands to have a victory in November that rivals the 1996 Clinton-Dole race. Looking at the Lone Star State, Arroyo explained, “On the night of the Wisconsin primary election returns I was dropping off a friend who is part of Obama's Louisiana inner-circle. A small group of the inner circle were gathering at an Uptown home to watch the returns. I went in for a few minutes to see the latest update. While I was standing in the living room the host of the gathering received a phone call from Houston, where Obama was scheduled to speak that evening at the Houston Rockets home arena. Demand for the tickets to his appearance was so great, the Obama campaign was selling tickets. “

“The call was to let the Louisiana team know that not only was the arena sold out at 20,000 tickets, there were another 10,000 people at the arena that COULDN'T GET IN. Thirty thousand people willing to pay to see a candidate speak at an arena; that's unheard of. Until that moment I was skeptical about the mania about Obama. Not any more. And if Obama wins the Democratic nomination I don't think the McCain campaign can afford to take him lightly.”

For Arroyo, the Illinois Senator’s strength in November comes from his command of the youth vote and his fellow African-Americans. “The percentage of active voters below age 24 has always been very low. Look for that to change in November if Obama is on the ballot. If Obama wins the nomination, and if he succeeds in getting those young voters to the polls on election day, he'll be President.”

“For the first time since the Vietnam generation millions of young people are taking an interest in politics that never have before. Obama has energized this new group of voters that defy quantifiable analysis because so many of them have never voted before… [H]e speaks their language, a language of hope and idealism in a world that had been, in their experience, limited and one-dimensional. Most of their young lives they've grown up in a post 9-11 world of fear, of isolationism, of terror alerts and war without end. He appeals to their hope for something better.”

Moreover, Arroyo continued, “I think that if Obama wins the nomination we will see record numbers of African Americans voting in November, far above anything we've ever seen before. If that is the case, then Obama's formula would be to gather the entire African American vote and just enough white votes to top fifty per cent. I can see a strategy where, effectively targeting specific groups of white and Hispanic voters, this could happen.”

Yet, despite the weeks of “Obamamania”, Hillary Clinton still remains strong with groups that the Illinois Senator desperately needs in November. Particularly interesting is despite weeks of outreach by Obama, Clinton still leads with Texas Hispanics 62% to 43% according to the Plain Dealer.
In a conference call with the media three weeks ago, Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn predicted that despite the losses in Virginia, DC, and Maryland, the real strength of the campaign would be demonstrated in March, when Hispanics and those making less than $30,000 per year constitute the majority of the Democratic electorate. That brought a somewhat sarcastic response from a reporter for the London Times who queried if the “wait and see” strategy sounded eerily like the “wait for Florida” rhetoric of Rudy Giuliani just a few weeks ago.

While Obama has won 24 of the last 29 contests, his victories have fallen into two categories, states with large African-American electorates, or states with highly educated Democratic voters. The Senator enjoys a coalition previously unseen in the Democratic politics, uniting Blacks with the Collegiate Intelligencia of the Democratic Party.

Past coalitions have normally constituted unions of minorities and the labor vote. Even the 1972 McGovern campaign, with its legion of college students, professors, and limousine liberals, enjoyed considerable labor and working class support.

Exit polling reveals that, African-American voters aside, there is a direct educational and economic split between a Clinton and an Obama supporter. Those without college, working class, or Hispanic have tended to line up behind the First Lady.

In other words, Hillary is no Rudy. She has a loyal constituency that the Illinois Senator has not yet penetrated to a significant degree. Nor, upon examination, are Maryland and Virginia any exception. The two states have amongst the highest percentage of College Graduates per population of any of the 29 contests so far.

Some argue that the exception that proves the rule that Obama can win anywhere is Wisconsin, where working class Democrats make up majorities of the primary electorate. However, “little Scandinavia” has an unusual political makeup. Even with very few Hispanics and Blacks, it is true that Obama won, but it is also true that the state has chosen Democratic insurgents in races going back to McGovern v. Scoop Jackson.

Some political commentators have noted that that Obama’s inspirational speeches do not often address the economic anxieties of those “left-behind” in the global economy, as Senators Clinton or Edwards might have described the emotional states of struggling working class Democratic voters, and Obama may have paid as price as a result.

Others blame the Illinois Senator’s lack of specific platforms for working class Americans.

Obama himself seems aware of the problem. In a speech in Madison, Wisconsin, the Senator managed to criticize John McCain’s support of a long-term commitment of US troops to Iraq in populist economic terms.

"Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Baghdad, we could have put that money into our schools and our hospitals, rebuilding our roads and bridges. And that's what the American people need us to do right now!"

He went on to propose a $210 billion program to create jobs in construction and environmental industries, a direct appeal to economically struggling voters. Obama's investment would be over 10 years as part of two programs. The larger is $150 billion to create five million so-called "green collar" jobs to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources.

Sixty billion would go to a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to rebuild highways, bridges, airports and other public projects. Obama estimated that could generate nearly two million jobs, many of them in the construction industry that's been hit by the housing crisis.

Still, while the Illinois Senator claims that the programs “are paid for”, the Republican National Committee immediately attacked the plan as “tax and spend liberalism”. GOP operatives noted that Obama’s attempt to win Democratic voters from Hillary Clinton could cost him moderate Independents to balanced-budget -focused McCain in the General Election.

Obama’s popularity with swing voters is multifaceted, but his refusal to demonized conservatives and his lack of specific policy proposals has, according to some polls, convinced some independent voters that he is far more centrist than Clinton—and therefore more electable.

The challenge for the first African-American to realistically have a chance at becoming President is to construct a policy proposal that win consistent majorities of working class whites and Hispanics that have remained loyal to Clinton without taking a stand so left-wing that it will create a negative perception in the fall. The answer may lay in a piece of advice that Al Gore rejected in 2000.

The Vice President asked a then-senior advisor to Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu how to secure votes in Louisiana and Florida, swing states that had left the Republican column to support Bill Clinton. The staffer replied that George W. Bush had successfully made the argument that the surplus had to be distributed in tax cuts, and Gore’s “lockbox” proposals had essentially failed to motivate moderate Southerners.

The answer, he said, “was to fight fire with fire”. Propose to eliminate taxes on any married couple making less than $50,000 per year. In other words, eliminate the bottom 15% tax bracket altogether. Frame the debate as “tax cuts for the rich” versus the middle class. That would swing working class whites and Hispanics leaning towards Bush.

“That would have easily given Gore 10,000 votes in Florida, and the election,” the staffer recounted to Bayoubuzz.com. Obama could frame much the same argument.

In the next few days, the Illinois Senator could co-opt John Edwards’ language about the decline in middle and working class incomes and say that if elected President, he would restore the top tax rates on the wealthiest Americans in exchange for eliminating the 10 & 15 percent tax brackets. Any single American making up to nearly $27,000 or any married couple earning $52,000 would not pay a penny in taxes, and the restoration on taxes “on the rich” would underwrite the cuts.

The revenue neutral argument would keep Independents in Obama’s corner. (Whether or not the proposal was, in fact, a dollar for dollar exchange, politically, it would sound as if it were.) Conservative economists like Arthur Laffer would probably point out that such a demand side cut exchanged for a supply side tax increase would damage the overall economy, but middle class approval would silence such arguments.

Working class Democrats would have a reason to abandon Hillary Clinton, and were John McCain to co-opt the tax cuts without equal increases in top marginal rates, Obama could attack the great advocate of fiscal responsibility in Washington as budgetarily dangerous.

It would be a nightmare scenario for Republicans in a General Election.

As Mike Huckabee and other GOP populists have put it, middle class and working class Republican voters gain little for their loyal support on election day. So-called “Wal-mart Republicans” in the South and Midwest have seen few direct economic benefits from casting ballots for GOP candidates. A massive middle class cut would appeal to them in November as surely as working class Democrats on now.

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