Obama’s white working class firewall

[DonViejo]

The president is spending his last campaign day in Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin -- states he was losing just a year ago

BY JOAN WALSH

President Obama is zipping around the Midwest to Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, states that are now widely considered his firewall, on the final day of his 2012 campaign. That’s because if he wins all three, given the pretty fixed red-blue map we all have emblazoned in our minds, he wins the election.

But a little over a year ago, the New York Times zeroed in on the Obama campaign’s looming 2012 challenge. He was way behind in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa that had carried him to victory in 2008. So the Obama team, the Times reported, was busy “charting an alternative course to re-election should he be unable to win Ohio and other industrial states traditionally essential to Democratic presidential victories.”

The trouble in the Rust Belt states, the Times and other outlets reported, was that “his support among blue-collar white voters far [was] weaker than among white-collar independents.” Trailing in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa, the Obama campaign was focusing on states like “Virginia, Colorado and Nevada, maybe even Arizona, places where the new Obama coalition of minorities and college-educated whites would carry the president to victory.”

One year later, among the remaining swing states, the president is stronger in Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa than in the Sun Belt. The fact that he’s spending his final day campaigning in those three states Monday underscores their importance. And his Rust Belt firewall may be white working class voters, particularly women. “If Romney were getting the same white vote [in Ohio] that he’s getting in Virginia, he’d be winning,” former John McCain strategist Mike Murphy said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

more
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/obamas_white_working_class_firewall/