Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The White Working Class

Ohio's white working-class voters: on the fence | Reuters

...In 2008, Obama carried Ohio by five percentage points against John McCain. He captured other industrial belt states, too, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois. Even Indiana, which had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, narrowly embraced Obama's message of "hope and change."

 This year the wobbly economy offers Romney a powerful opening, but he has struggled to relate to blue-collar voters. That's hardly surprising. His fortune is estimated at $250 million, he once penned a New York Times op-ed headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," and he regularly complains about "union stooges."

 Both campaigns unleashed ads this month aimed at working-class voters in battleground states. In Obama's two-minute TV spot, steelworkers blamed Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney once ran, for profiting from the bankruptcy of a Kansas City, Missouri mill, calling the Republican "a job destroyer..."

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