“You aren’t voting for the man,” Steele said, summarizing Obama’s appeal to white men. “You don’t know the man. You’re voting for the opportunity to document you are not a racist.”
For months, the story line of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary was women voters, black voters, Latino voters.
But a strange thing has happened on the trail to the Democratic nomination: Beginning most notably with Super Tuesday voting in California, and in subsequent contests leading to what could be Tuesday’s final showdown in Texas and Ohio, white men have flocked to Barack Obama.
Meet Birney Young. The 63-year-old retired San Jose bounty hunter is not afraid to say what he feels: He can’t stand Hillary Clinton and never thought he would support a black man for president. Now, he’s sending $25 contributions to Obama, the most recent one to help him win in Texas and Ohio.
“I’ve surprised myself,” said Young, who more typically casts protest votes for third-party candidates. “I’m surprised I care. It’s the dream he talks about that has awakened me. It overcomes whatever color barrier I have had.”
Come Tuesday, if Clinton is to keep her campaign alive, she not only needs to win women and Latinos by the huge margins that secured her victories in larger states, she also needs white men.
They are dubbed the forgotten voting bloc, barely mentioned in Super Tuesday analyses, but in recent weeks white males have become the soccer moms of the 2008 Democratic race.
With the races close in Texas and Ohio, how white men vote could make the difference.
“White men are the critical swing vote,” posits David Paul Kuhn, who writes
for the online site Politico.com and wrote “The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma.”
“The candidate who focused on women will have to win more men to revive her candidacy.”
Interestingly, California was the first significant-size state in which white men heavily voted for Obama, foreshadowing a trend that carried through to Virginia and Wisconsin. Now it shows up in national polls as well as in Texas, where Obama and Clinton are locked in a tight contest.
In Ohio, white men still support Clinton but by an increasingly smaller margin than previously, and her once-mighty overall lead has narrowed considerably.
There is a lot of speculation among political experts as to why Clinton is faring poorly among white men and Obama is catching fire.
It ranges from sexism and guilt to party demographics – white males voting in many Democratic primaries tend to be more liberal or are independents, Obama’s base. Some speculate baby boomer men are more excited by the prospect of electing a black man than a woman.
The shift coincided with John Edwards leaving the race. Finally, there’s Clinton herself, who may have turned off voters, especially men, by recently mocking Obama’s rise.
Jason Leith, 39, a Belmont private investigator, is attracted by Obama, though not repelled by Clinton. He can recall the exact place, listening to a car radio in a movie theater parking lot, when he first heard Obama speak.
“I like the way he frames the issues,” he said.
Yet, when Clinton last week suggested media bias by wondering aloud why she always gets the first debate question, it probably struck men differently than women, said Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo.
“She wants to make sure women are identifying with her campaign. By doing that she turns off men. It sounds like complaining, when men would say, ‘Get real, just be part of it.’ “
Clinton supporters say the New York senator’s message is resonating among white men in states like Ohio, where the Democratic electorate includes more working-class white male voters, who like her no-nonsense, find-solutions approach. In California, where Clinton won, but Obama beat her by 20 percentage points among white male voters, white Democratic men tend to be more educated and affluent.
“The working Democrat likes Hillary a lot better,” said Ellen Malcolm, head of the EMILY’S List, which works to elect Democratic women, including Clinton. She also believes Clinton has been the subject of sexist reporting and commentary in the media, reinforcing male stereotypes of women leaders.
And campaign supporters make no apology for the laser-focus attention Clinton has given to women voters. In virtually every primary, women voters are the majority who vote in Democratic primaries.
Her foremost challenge heading into Tuesday is to keep enough white male voters, and Latino men in Texas, while winning big among her core constituencies, notably women of all races and ethnicities.
“I’d rather not have to choose, but in a Democratic primary I’d rather have the white woman vote than the white man,” said Chris Lehane, a San Francisco-based consultant who is backing Clinton.
And it’s not all about what Clinton has done wrong.
Many believe Obama has run a masterful campaign, and Democratic white men, like others coming aboard, are thrilled at the notion of the nation electing a black man for president.
“He and his supporters have a firm grasp on how to best market his unique background to reach America’s previously cynical,” said Steven Millner, chair of African-American Studies at San Jose State University. “His primary successes are riveting a good many of this nation’s now aging baby boomers who recognize that all may not be lost in America.”
But such sentiment may be short-lived, warn others, should Obama become the nominee and face more scrutiny.
Shelby Steele, the well-known conservative author and Stanford University scholar who is biracial like Obama, contends white liberals are drawn to Obama, in part, because a vote somehow absolves guilt for the nation’s racist past. He believes Obama has gotten through the primary season with little scrutiny and without having to explain his philosophical underpinnings.
“You aren’t voting for the man,” Steele said, summarizing Obama’s appeal to white men. “You don’t know the man. You’re voting for the opportunity to document you are not a racist.”
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