Michigan dogs Democrats
...There are other factors besides race at work in Michigan. It is in a one state recession because of the tax policies of the Democrats that have driven employers and jobs from the area.You could easily get the impression, through casual conversations, that Michigan will be a cakewalk for Barack Obama. Most people you talk to say that they plan to vote for him. Nearly all working families have been touched by the downturn, which has been longer and more severe here than in most other parts of the nation.
Relatives in different parts of the state are seeing less of one another because of high gasoline prices. Auto industry workers, traumatized by the number of colleagues who have been laid off, worry that they will be the next to go.
The anger at George W. Bush is white-hot.
Margaret Schlack, who is married and the mother of four, talked about the election after attending Sunday services at St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church in Livonia, a largely white, working-class suburb of Detroit.
“This area has seen a lot of economic trouble,” she said. “A lot of people are out of work. The housing market is just awful. And I don’t feel that John McCain cares about the average person.”
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The problem is the dog that isn’t barking.
Talk for more than a few minutes with an Obama supporter in a white middle-class or working-class area and you’ll hear about a friend or relative or co-worker who has a real problem with the candidate. When Jack Davis’s wife, Joan, who also plans to vote for Senator Obama, was asked about Democrats that she knew who would not vote for him, she replied:
“My mother! She’s 85 years old. I’m sorry to say, but she will not vote for him.”
Joseph Costigan, a regional political director for the union, Unite Here, spoke candidly about the tension between the economic distress of working men and women and the persistent, though hard-to-quantify, resistance to Barack Obama’s candidacy.
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After many years of watching black candidates run for public office, and paying especially close attention to this year’s Democratic primary race, I’ve developed my own (very arbitrary) rule of thumb regarding the polls in this election:
Take at least two to three points off of Senator Obama’s poll numbers, and assume a substantial edge for Senator McCain in the breakdown of the undecided vote.
Using that formula, Barack Obama is behind in the national election right now.
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It is not an accident that Toyota built a new factory in San Antonio and not Detroit. Michigan's Democrat governor has been a disaster. Voters have much more reason to be angry with her than with Bush. That in itself is enough to give Democrats pause. The state has been much more prosperous when it had Republican governors.
If McCain picks Mitt Romney, he has a real shot of carrying Michigan.
If Obama loses this year it will not be because of race. There are too many other reasons to vote against him. Democrat energy polices have done more damage to Michigan than any other state. Obama has no answer and refuses to support a robust drilling program that has the support of 75 percent of the voters. Obama is wrong on taxes and wrong on national security. His Iraq policy would have been a true disaster rather than the faux disaster the Democrats claim the Bush policy to be.
I do think Herbert's reading of the polls is probably right. But I think that is because of an inherent Democrat bias in the polls and not because of Obama's race. The primaries this year also support this thesis that the undecideds break against Obama. That is because he has not built their trust that he can handle the job.
He has been all "unity, hope and change" and has stumbled when it comes to specifics about the change he wants. He has shown an inability to unify those closest to him, i.e. the Rev. Wright and his ridiculous claim that Aids virus is a government conspiracy against blacks. I know Obama does not beleive that nonsense, but many of the members of his former church do and Obama was unable change them.
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