"The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years," Obama strategist David Axelrod told National Public Radio on April 23, after his candidate lost the Pennsylvania primary to Hillary Clinton. "This is not new that Democratic candidates don't rely solely on those votes."
Still, Obama strategists acknowledge that one of their first tasks is reaching out to the Democrats who tended to vote for Clinton in Pennsylvania and other battleground states such as Ohio, Missouri and Florida: not only blue-collar, downscale white voters, but also older voters, Latinos and Jews.
This month, Obama plans to spend three days in Miami and the Tampa Bay area.
Ceasar, the Broward County Democratic leader, predicted that at least one group, Jewish voters, will remain in the Democratic fold despite their preference for Clinton as a nominee. "They will sit shiva for a couple of weeks," Ceasar said, referring to the Jewish tradition of mourning, "and then their Democratic DNA will kick in and they'll be enthusiastic supporters of the nominee."
McCaskill said she hopes Obama will make time to visit relatively conservative, largely white rural areas in her state. "People are hurting because of the economy; gas prices hit people in rural areas more heavily because they have longer distances to go," she said. "Barack has a good message on the economy . . . and that's a tough barrel for John McCain to get around."
On the flip side of the demographic issue, Obama's ability to increase the turnout of African American voters could boost Democrats in several key states won by Bush in 2004, including Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Missouri.
David Bositis, an expert on black politics and voting trends at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, predicts that black voter turnout could be 20% higher this year than it was four years ago.
In Ohio, where Bush won 16% of the black vote, Obama could not only attract many of those Bush voters but bring out more black voters overall -- enough, potentially, to erase the GOP's past margins of victory. In Florida, Bositis pointed to the 2000 election, when record black turnout was credited with helping Gore come within a whisker of winning the state.
The notion that his race may not be Obama's greatest potential vulnerability is reflected in the fact that Republican strategists are already working to paint him as a liberal. In recent weeks, conservative groups have aired ads suggesting the Illinois senator is out of step with middle-American values.
