The reason so many pundits approved when Barack Obama’s campaign floated the idea of picking pure-vanilla Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana for a running mate this week is that it addressed the biggest concern among Obama supporters in and out of the media corps — that he can’t connect with lunch-pail Democrats in the Midwest.
In June, when Obama’s hopes were more audacious, his team was talking about a “new electoral map” in which western and southern states came into play for the Democrat. As they’d say in Biloxi, t’ain’t gonna happen.
It was an understandable error. After Obama’s performance in Big Sky country and Dixie during the Democratic primaries against Hillary Clinton, people were imagining a brand new political world.
Obama is keeping the races in Colorado and New Mexico close, just as John Kerry did. But the idea that he could also prevail in places such as Alaska, Montana or North Dakota has evaporated. And new internal polling indicates that Nevada might be trending toward John McCain of neighboring Arizona.
Down south, the Bible Belt has cinched tight around McCain. It seems less and less likely that even North Carolina is worth Obama’s time.
And in the carpetbagger haven of Virginia, Obama¹s best chance in the former Confederacy, a 7-point lead over McCain is now a one-point deficit in the latest Rasmussen poll.
Part of the reason for the Obamanauts’ fixation on the new map was that they were desperate to avoid having an election again decided by the residents of Ohio. Obama experienced his most galling loss of the primaries there, and no matter how many Bruce Springsteen concerts he hosted, John Kerry just couldn’t break through in the Buckeye State.
Obama probably needs to win in Ohio as well as neighboring Indiana and Michigan.
But if McCain can manage to win in Ohio and just one of the two others, he’ll likely make it to 270 electoral votes.
When Clinton loyalists were talking up Obama’s flaws as a candidate, they warned of just such an Ohio scenario. The Obama backers, though, insisted that their candidate would transcend the old politics.
But as the summer fades away, both campaigns have obviously accepted Ohio’s status.
McCain always hoped it would be so, and has spent enough time in and around Cincinnati to know the difference between chili five ways and chili three ways (it’s beans and onions).
And now it’s clear that Obama also understands all roads lead to Ohio.
Aside from his very public embrace of Evan Bayh, Obama’s pitch has become a lot more about the New Deal than new politics.
We’ve seen Obama adopting in shaky stages an energy policy that is old-fashioned socialist populism. A candidate who once said that we would have to sacrifice to save the Earth and wean ourselves from foreign oil now says he’ll let us poke the seabed full of holes and will open the spigot on the strategic oil reserves.
After hearing enough people in Zanesville, Ohio, tell you that the only thing they care about is gas prices, all that stuff about stopping the rise of the oceans starts to sound a little silly.
Southern Ohio is probably not in reach for Obama, which means he needs to score big in Rust Belt towns where the painful cures prescribed by the likes of Al Gore won’t get a very good reception.
His continuing problem in the Midwest is that remaining undecided voters are white, middle class and probably don’t have college degrees.
In other words, Obama’s demographic weak spot.
While he is relaxing in his native Hawaii next week, Obama will have to figure out what he needs to do to bring a little more of the aloha spirit to Youngstown.
Correction: The print version of this column misstated the size of Obama’s onetime lead in Virginia polls. It has been corrected in the online version.
