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A White, Working-Class State for Obama
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| Contributor | WesternDem |
| Last Edited | WesternDem May 19, 2008 08:13pm |
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| Category | Blog Entry |
| News Date | Tuesday, May 20, 2008 02:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By every reasonable measure, the election's over. The math doesn't lie, and since North Carolina, the flood of superdelegates and Edwards delegates have put Obama on track to seal this thing up by early June. The tenor of the campaign has shifted, and with attacks on Obama by Bush, we've entered general-election mode. Hillary hasn't explicitly conceded, but in the new positive incarnation of her campaign, we can hear the concession. So once again, Oregon's vote looks to come too late to affect the election.
But that's just if you look at the numbers. In an equally important dimension--the battle of perception and narrative--Oregon could save the day for an Obama campaign. 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%, tenth 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. |
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