Race question threatens to derail Obama

IT IS the question that has hung over Barack Obama's presidential primary campaign: why has he been unable to win over enough working class and white voters to wrap up the Democratic nomination?

Lurking behind that question is another: is the Democratic Party hesitating about race as it moves to the brink of nominating an African-American to be president?

Obama remains ahead of Hillary Clinton in delegates, in the popular vote and in national polls, and Clinton certainly has her own problems trying to herd Democrats into her corner.

But just when it seemed that the Democratic Party was close to anointing Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again – in Pennsylvania, a big general election state – dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters. The composition of Clinton's support – or looked at another way, the makeup of those voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Obama – has Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race may be playing.

"I'm sure there is some of that," said David Axelrod, Obama's senior political adviser, as he considered how race is playing among voters in late-primary states. He said that Clinton's biggest advantage has been among older voters, "and I think there is a general inclination on the part of the older voters to vote for what is more familiar". Axelrod added: "Here's a guy named Barack Obama, an African-American guy, relatively new. That's a lot of change."

While arguably critical to determining the viability of Obama's candidacy, the role of race is difficult to disentangle from the other strands of the political debate surrounding him, encompassing sensitive topics such as values, elitism, ideology and experience.

It has historically proved challenging to measure how racial attitudes factor into voter decisions. Respondents don't tend to announce to pollsters that they will not vote for a candidate because he or she is black.

It is also hard to discount the fact that Obama has won big victories in very white states. The crowds at his rallies are as white as any that one might find at a Clinton rally, and there are many analysts in both parties who believe that racial attitudes in the US are changing at a breakneck pace, particularly among younger voters.

Complicating things even further are the high-profile episodes that have rattled his campaign. Obama's remark at a private fundraiser in San Francisco about bitter blue-collar workers "clinging to" guns and religion was the kind of assertion that would be damaging to a candidate of any race.

Inflammatory statements made by Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr, who is black, have been seized on by Republicans to present Obama as unpatriotic. An advertisement released by Republicans in North Carolina last week included that portrayal.

The statement by his wife, Michelle, that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country" has been invoked by Republicans in an attempt to portray Obama as culturally unlike the people he is asking to vote for him, a historically potent line of attack.

"Race is intertwined with a broader notion that he is not 'one of us'," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, which conducted an extensive examination of voter attitudes, particularly among Democrats who have an unfavourable view of Obama. "They react negatively to people who are seen as different."

Geoff Garin, a senior strategist for Clinton, said that while race may have had some role in Obama's problems in Pennsylvania, his biggest problem was that these events underlined the image of him being out of touch.

"Voters came into the campaign with pretty big question marks about whether Obama gets them," Garin said. "And those comments reinforced doubts that people had."

At the same time, John McCain, the Republican nominee, has sought to portray Obama as ideologically out of step with much of the country, focusing on his views on tax cuts, healthcare and the war in Iraq.

"The big question about Barack Obama from the very beginning has been: is he safe?" said Peter D Hart, a Democratic pollster not affiliated with any of the campaigns. "Safe in terms of both the cultural values that he has, and about whether he is strong enough to be commander in chief."

For Obama, race presents two potential problems: voters opposing Obama simply because he is black, and Democrats who will not support Obama because they do not think a black man can win a general election.

The results in Pennsylvania suggested problems exist. A poll of Democratic voters conducted by Edison/Mitofsky found that Clinton drew 63% of the white vote while Obama drew 90% of the black vote, mirroring a pattern that has been found in many other states. More strikingly, the poll found that 18% of Democrats said that race mattered to them in this contest, and just 63% of those voters said they would support Obama in a general election.

There is also a flip side to the increasing racial polarisation in Democratic voting patterns: should Clinton win the nomination, some Democrats said, there is a risk that she would be unable to mobilise black voters to support her if she won the nomination in a way that was viewed by black voters as being unfair.

The exit poll found that 69% of white Democrats would vote for Obama in a general election campaign over McCain; 73% of blacks said they would vote for Clinton over McCain.

Last Wednesday, Obama played down the racial aspects of the coalition Clinton used to defeat him in Pennsylvania.

"Our problem has less to do with white working-class voters," Obama said. "In fact the problem, to the extent that there is a problem, is that older voters are very loyal to Senator Clinton."

But the real test may come in the general election, should he win the Democratic nomination. Pennsylvania and Ohio are going to be two critical states this autumn, and it is going to be difficult for any Democrat to win those states without support from the Democrats that Obama is struggling to bring on to his bandwagon.