For White Working Class, Obama Rises on Empty Wallets
By David Von Drehle
Lincoln County, Mo., a fast-growing exurb northwest of St. Louis, is one of a handful of U.S. counties that always vote for the winning candidate in presidential elections. This perfect record goes back more than a half-century. And it explains why I recently set out for that oracle county, traveling across the middle of bellwether Missouri to ask how the ultimate swing voters -- the white working class -- are looking at this year's decision.
I followed a cord of suburban and rural communities that connects the urban Democratic strongholds of Kansas City and St. Louis. After stops along the way, I found myself in Lincoln County, driving through a little subdivision of newly minted homes called Ashleigh Estates, looking for voters to interview. A group of young families was gathered on a concrete driveway, next to a pickup truck with a big toolbox in the bed. Lots of kids, ranging from toddlers to preteens, were playing in the slanting evening sunshine, while a couple of the dads sipped after-work beers.
Nothing special was going on, one mom explained. "We don't make a lot of money," said Tammy Pyle, "so we just hang out and have fun together." Another mom volunteered that the key to this neighborly spirit is that they steer clear of politics when shooting the breeze. But they made an exception in this case.
"I really wanted Hillary," said Holly Haggard, a purposeful young woman in tan slacks and running shoes. "Well," her husband Robbie quickly reminded her, "now we got Obama." He said this in a tone of voice that made me think he wasn't too happy about the fact.
If this story had been written a few months ago, that exchange might have been the gist of it -- white working-class voters left cold by Barack Obama. But then Holly came back with exactly the thing Obama might hope she would say: "Yeah, and we got $3.74 gas too." For many Americans, the price of gas remains shorthand for a whole world of economic woes.
Robbie's response this time was almost a sigh of resignation. "Think I don't know that?" he said softly.
I soon gathered that six of the eight adults standing in that driveway planned to vote for Obama in November. Their support ranged from enthusiastic to reluctant. And of course, there's nothing scientific about one driveway. But I heard similar things throughout my trip. Among white voters, Obama appeared to be rising on a pile of empty wallets. Many folks in Lincoln County shared that impression.
"Who do you think will win around here?" I asked.
"Obama," Robbie Haggard answered flatly, and several others agreed.
"But Missouri's always been Republican," Pyle protested.
"I think Missouri's had about enough," Holly Haggard said.
Some hard data support that reaction. A recent poll of 1,024 Missouri voters, sponsored by Time and CNN, found that Obama's standing in the Show-Me State has improved significantly in the past month. A must-win state for John McCain's campaign -- once considered fairly safe -- is now a virtual tie, with the momentum going in Obama's direction. That's not something that can be accomplished solely with the support of liberals and minorities -- not in Missouri. Here in the borderland between North and South, between East and West, between rich and poor, between city and farm, any would-be President must stay competitive among white voters of modest and middle incomes.
There's still time to change again, for doubts to resurface, for suspicions to harden. And voters may say one thing to pollsters and do another in the voting booth. Yet at this late stage of the campaign, after dozens of interviews across this toss-up state, evidence suggests that the issue that once seemed as if it would dominate this election -- Obama's race -- is not consuming the people who will actually decide.
People like Maureen O'Hare, whom I found shopping for shoes in the Sedalia Wal-Mart with her daughter Ashley Smith and bright-eyed 2-year-old grandson Traven. Sedalia is an old railroad town of about 20,000 people -- a population essentially unchanged in the past 90 years. George W. Bush won two-thirds of the vote in Sedalia and surrounding Pettis County in 2004, and one of those votes belonged to O'Hare. But after years of voting for Republicans, she told me, she feels compelled to change horses. Of Obama, she said simply, "I think he would do better in a crisis." Her daughter nodded in agreement as Traven watched impatiently from a shopping cart.
Plenty of people along Route 50 and I-70 in the heart of the heartland will vote for McCain -- like Don Wren, who owns an ice cream shop in Troy and supports the Republican ticket for religious reasons. But the gop nominee is up against a tough reality out here when it comes to holding the swing voters who elected Bush. McCain is offering a promise of reform to a group of voters who have little faith left in the promises of politicians. "They're all going to tell you what they want you to hear," O'Hare said. And back on the driveway, Tammy Pyle's husband Larry echoed the sentiment. "It's all special interests now," he said. Larry and Tammy were the two Republicans in the group, but even they weren't buying the McCain message. "Whoever gets in, it's not going to change," Tammy said. "So for me, the most important issue is taxes. I just don't want to pay more taxes."
Obama's promises are not necessarily more credible to these skeptical voters, but he has the advantage of being undeniably new. He is toting a lot of unusual baggage, but for many voters, that is outweighed by the fact that he isn't more of the same. Only 9% of Americans feel the country is on the right track, according to the latest Gallup poll -- the lowest number in the poll's history. "I just don't want another four years of Bush, and here's McCain voting with him 90% of the time," said Ben Humphreys as he stood with his neighbors on that driveway in Troy. His wife Dawn said, "Obama seems to care more about people like me. He's more for the people."
Across the Wide Missouri
Two recent time polls -- a national survey and a sample of battleground states, including Missouri -- support the notion that a sour and deteriorating economy is helping Obama close the deal with white America. The Wall Street crisis has driven Bush's approval ratings to new depths, and McCain, at the helm of Bush's gop, is struggling to escape the undertow. Nearly two-thirds of the 1,098 people sampled in the national poll said they personally are going backward economically. Among these anxious voters, Obama had opened a huge lead -- some 25 percentage points -- over McCain. Obama appears to be succeeding in his effort to get past traditional racial politics. A majority of all voters agreed with the notion that Obama "isn't white or black; he's a little of both." Obama receives a favorable rating from more than 2 out of 3 economically stressed voters, far ahead of the ratings for McCain or his running mate, Sarah Palin, whose appeal outside the Republican base has been evaporating. The net result is that Obama has overtaken McCain among that volatile and often decisive demographic group: white women. And he has narrowed McCain's lead among white men.
Both campaigns have evoked the ghost of Harry S. Truman, a salt-of-the-earth fellow whose honesty and common sense allowed him to govern in Washington without being corrupted. So I began my trip near the leafy street corner in Independence, Mo., where Truman had his home. I strolled the downtown sidewalks along which the former President took his morning constitutional after he returned home from building the postwar world. In a shop near the courthouse, I asked the woman behind the counter what she was thinking about the election. She replied that she was a lifelong Republican and a big fan of Palin. "I find Sarah refreshing," she said. "More of a doer than a talker, down-to-earth, with family problems like the rest of us. You know, to a certain extent, we're all swimming upstream in life."
Another store clerk joined us. She offered her impression that Palin "was like a snake for some reason," but her co-worker admonished her to stop paying attention to "gossip. You can hear gossip about anyone." The younger clerk sort of shrugged and said she might not vote at all. "I think they need to face more up to the economy," she explained.
The two women wouldn't give me their names. They said they were worried about what the store's owner might think. The reason I've mentioned them is that later, when those poll results came in, I recalled another thing the woman behind the counter had volunteered. "I would hate to think that anyone would vote against Obama because of who he is," she said, "but I also don't like the idea of people voting for him just because he's black."
Voters in the national poll were asked about that very issue, and overwhelmingly -- by more than 9 to 1 -- they said Obama's race won't be a factor in how they vote. Even among black voters, only 1 in 6 said they would take Obama's race into account. Still, the question hovers over the campaign. A controversial recent survey by the Associated Press pushed white participants to react to a list of negative racial stereotypes. One-third of them put credence in at least one of the unpleasant generalizations about blacks. After some complicated statistical legerdemain, the AP concluded that race could cost Obama up to 6 percentage points on Election Day.
The TIME poll asked voters whether they "personally know anyone who is more likely" -- or less likely -- "to vote for Obama because of his race." Again, most people said no, but this time the margin was narrower. Forty-four percent said they knew someone who would be less likely to vote for Obama, while 38% said Obama's race would be a plus for someone they knew.
My trip took me several times across the wide, brown Missouri River, and it occurred to me that these issues of skin color and tribe have haunted these parts at least since Lewis and Clark paddled the liquid highway westward. But as I listened to voters, what became clear was that the Obama campaign is not the simple racial referendum some commentators have pictured. I heard several reasons why voters might be reluctant to support the guy, but race was rarely cited.
"I like him, but he has so little experience," Cheryl Collier told me when I visited her bookstore near the train station in Lee's Summit. "He's an amazingly gifted orator, and you think, If only he could show where he has accomplished the things he talks about."
I met people who disagreed with Obama over abortion rights. I met people who won't vote for him because they fear that he'll raise their taxes. Sarah Roy, an Obama supporter who owns a scrapbooking store in Warrensburg, told me that her husband is in the military; he plans to vote against Obama because McCain is a fellow warrior. In other words, if Obama -- a first-term Senator with an exotic name, liberal politics and a thin resume -- doesn't win, it will be for a lot of the same reasons other Democrats have lost, including the fact that Americans have leaned toward Republican Presidents for nearly 60 years.
Obama certainly seems to see it that way. "The fact of the matter is, people have been continually looking for how race will impact this campaign," he recently told a television interviewer. With only a month to go and his support surging in Virginia -- the capital of the old Confederacy -- the impact appears to be minimal, Obama said.
'Haven't We Evolved?'
I met Kim Cannon on a bench outside the Hair Design Team salon in Troy, where she was taking a smoking break between customers. It was a pleasant afternoon, and from where she sat, the green hills of northeast Missouri -- Mark Twain country -- rolled gently in every direction. A lifelong resident of Lincoln County, Cannon has seen those hills stitched with new roads and dotted with parking lots, but not so much that she can't still spy open fields in the distance.
Politics is a popular topic at Hair Design Team. "The funniest part are my clients who say Obama is the Antichrist," Cannon said. "I just laugh." Because after months on the fence between the two candidates, Cannon has come down on Obama's side, and the reason is simple: "The economy is terrible, and he is more for the working man."
Many of Cannon's friends and relatives work in construction. When times were booming, people had cash in their pockets and could afford to vote on issues other than dollars and cents. Now that families are struggling, ideology feels like a luxury -- at least, that's the way Cannon described a recent conversation with one of her friends.
"He told me it's not the government's job to handle his health care," Cannon recalled, "and that really made sense to me, really struck home. But when you're working hard and paying taxes and still can't afford insurance -- well, government helps with everything else, doesn't it?"
Her next appointment arrived, so she stubbed out her cigarette and invited me inside the salon. As I was walking in, a distinguished older woman named Peggy Simpson was rising from one of the chairs, with her white hair immaculately coiffed. "I was leaning toward McCain," she told me, "until he said the other day that the economy is good." She was referring to a remark the candidate made as the Wall Street crisis was deepening: "The fundamentals of our economy are still strong." McCain quickly revised his statement to refer to the diligence and productivity of U.S. workers, but from what I heard in Missouri, the original remark made a lasting impression on voters. Nothing about the economy feels strong to them. "The main issue is the economy," Simpson continued. "The Republicans always say they are going to lower taxes, but I just don't see how they can do that anymore. My whole life, they've wanted to give more money to the people who already have the fancy, high-paying jobs." And then, as if to assure me that she wasn't an Obamamaniac, she added, "I was for Hillary Clinton."
I wound up spending a long time in the salon, though I didn't have to ask many questions. Just about everyone seemed to have a strong opinion. It was the sort of place where everyone knows one another in a small-town way, and they all talk and laugh and say outrageous things. Renee Martin, the salon's owner, told me she and her husband disagree so strongly, they can't even talk about the election anymore. And that was surprising because at first she was afraid of Obama. "What had me scared," she explained, "was the whole thing about, Was he a Muslim?"
"A President of the United States should not be named Obama," chimed in stylist Gina Gilley.
"But he wasn't even around his father," Martin replied. And she went on: "Then my sister-in-law and my pastor helped me out. They gave me places to go online to learn the truth." Her sister-in-law is so committed to Obama that she has volunteered to knock on doors in her apartment complex. "She ran into two old guys who were for McCain, but all the rest were leaning toward Obama."
Martin paused to focus on her blow-drying, and Mary Champion -- whose hair was being blown -- took over. "McCain's not out here worrying about the high gas prices and high grocery prices. When he said the economy's strong ..." Champion seemed too irritated to finish the thought.
Of all the strong opinions, though, everyone agreed that the strongest belonged to Teri Peasel, who was busy highlighting the hair of Christy St. Pierre, a second-grade teacher. "I tell you," Peasel said, "I think if the Republicans get it again, we'll have another world war. Honestly, this whole government scares me. I am pro-life, but that's between a woman and her God. I'm voting for Obama, and I think he has a very good chance around here because people are so sick of what's going on."
From the chair, St. Pierre said, "My students are all talking about it, and you know they just reflect what they hear at home. Obama's winning easily." "Absolutely," Peasel answered. "I hear this crap about 'Oh, I ain't voting for a black man.' I say, 'Haven't we evolved?'"
Perhaps we have. And if so, when the story is told, the moral might be that white and black begin to fade when the color that matters is green -- the green of money we can no longer count on.