Barack Obama's inability to reach out to white working class voters could cost him, writes NIALL O'DOWD
SENATOR BARACK Obama is on the verge of achieving perhaps the greatest breakthrough in American politics by becoming the first African American president. But questions are being asked about whether he is quite the racing certainty he appeared after the Democratic race drew to a close in June.
After an impressive victory over Hillary Clinton (whom I supported) the Illinois senator set forth with a wet sail for the White House. Media excitement reached its zenith on the night of his final primary victory and Republicans referred caustically to the "anointed one".
Since then, however, his campaign has seemed becalmed at times. He remains only three to five points ahead of Senator John McCain in major national polls, while generic Democrats lead Republicans by up to 15 points when the question is asked which party voters will support.
Right across the leadership of the Democratic Party there is an increasing unease that they might somehow blow their best chance at the White House in a generation. An unpopular president, a disastrous war and ailing economy should make this a landslide Democratic year. But yet the polls stubbornly have McCain in a virtual dead heat with Obama. Part of Obama's problem relates to his difficulty in expanding his winning coalition over Hillary Clinton.
He put together African Americans, liberal whites and moderate independents, but never cracked the DNA of the white working class who remain the single biggest voting bloc up for grabs, especially in key states.
That remains his major problem. Some attribute it to racism, which may be correct to a point. However, there is a broader concern that such voters don't really know him and don't buy breathtaking intellectual visions of America's future or inspired oratory when their major concern is how to overcome bad economic times to keep their job. They are the Willie Lomans of American society, grinding out a weekly wage in hard times and unimpressed with anyone who cannot relate to that struggle.
Worse, the Obama camp seems reluctant to engage the ethnic vote in a manner eerily similar to Al Gore in 2000 who threw away countless opportunities to engage ethnic communities such as Irish Americans in the full-throated way that the Clintons did.
In one celebrated instance, Gore turned down a packed Irish rally in Florida on the week of the election. The 532 votes he lost by would surely have been present in the hall that night.
Obama's lack of outreach is becoming a major concern in the Irish community. Writing last week on the key political blog site the Huffington Post, Tom Hayden, former California state assemblyman and husband of Jane Fonda, who is a committed Obama supporter, stated: "Aside from producing green O'Bama T-shirts earlier this year the Obama campaign has not yet displayed the rhetoric or resources necessary to win its share of the Irish-American vote.
"Barack Obama needs the huge Irish-American vote in closely fought Pennsylvania battlegrounds like Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia suburbs . . . there are similar pockets of Irish-American swing votes in other key states."
Hayden wrote that the Irish dimension is "so far being lost or downplayed" by the Obama camp. "To ignore this Irish dimension serves to the advantage of the implicit Republican appeal on racial issues like affirmative action and religious issues like abortion."
Meanwhile, in the Irish Echonewspaper last week, Prof John McCarthy, a conservative Catholic commentator, also took issue with Obama's lack of outreach.
Commenting on his "failure to visit Ireland" on his recent overseas trip, McCarthy stated: "One cannot imagine Hillary Clinton avoiding such a trip . . . surely an aspiring world leader would want to acquaint himself in greater detail with an apparent success story in the resolution of conflict."
McCarthy went on: "A more likely explanation might well be the unimportance his campaign strategists attach to the Irish vote in America."
That could certainly be the case; repeated attempts to have Obama address an Irish presidential forum have failed while it now seems very likely that John McCain will take the opportunity in the near future.
The frustration is mirrored in other ethnic communities I have spoken with and even among old labour supporters. Some of the labour leaders apparently expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of outreach in no uncertain terms in a recent meeting.
Perhaps there is no place for the old method of building ethnic coalitions in the new politics that Obama says he represents. But he may find out, as Al Gore did, that passing up opportunities to speak directly to the concerns of different ethnic groups could come back to haunt him. The lack of movement towards him by those same ethnic constituencies is the key reason why his poll numbers remain static.
This is not an equal election where every vote counts the same. Key swing ethnic voters in critical states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana will likely decide the outcome because of the peculiarities of the electoral college system.
On the other side, McCain has kept his contacts with key Irish Americans current and his New York state chairman Edward Cox has been active in soliciting support from prospective Irish backers.
John McCain is no George Bush. He is a resilient, smart and empathetic politician whose maverick appeal has led to him running far ahead of his party's other candidates in the November race. The Republican attack line now is clear - to paint Obama as "other" than normal Americans. They have gone back to the Gore and Kerry playbooks, and why not: it worked well both times. By their lights Obama is far too liberal for middle America, far more a rock star than a politician, a man who lacks experience of the world.
We will soon find out if they are right. We will soon find of if Barack Obama was merely a creation of a powerful left-wing caucus in the Democratic Party who was never going to win a general election, or a leader for the ages who confounds contemporary political wisdom and wins the White House in truly historic fashion.
In order to become that figure he has to reach out beyond his comfort zone. There are signs that he may be trying to do so. The recent appointment of Carol Wheeler, a well-known Irish American activist in Washington, as Irish liaison is certainly a step in the right direction.
In 1980 Americans struggled with a similar type election, which pitted incumbent Jimmy Carter, a known quantity like McCain, against former actor Ronald Reagan, then very much like Obama and considered a leap in the dark because of his late start in politics. Eventually Reagan won the ethnic vote over in droves creating an entire new category of voters called "Reagan Democrats" and cashed in with an historic win.
Obama's task is to succeed where Gore and Kerry failed - to win back those Reagan Democrats for his own party. So far he has sounded an uncertain trumpet on whether he has what it takes for them to change.
• Niall O'Dowd is founder and publisher of Irish America Magazineand newspaper in New York. He was for a time an active member of Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential election campaign team