Washington diary: Edwards endorses

By Matt Frei
BBC News, Washington

Sometimes this election campaign sounds like a board game designed by sociologists.

Will Mr Edwards help Mr Obama win over white working-class voters?

Hillary has nailed blue-collar white men.

Obama has captured white-collar black women.

The demographic that we have become obsessed with and the candidates have been busy hunting like wild game are white working-class voters.

Hillary Clinton has them for now - Barack Obama needs them for later.

And you may remember that at the beginning of this race they followed a man called John Edwards.

He is the former vice-presidential candidate, US senator and multi-millionaire trial lawyer who was born with a blue collar and ended up having $400 (£200) hair cuts.

Despite his wealth and success, Mr Edwards became the populist spokesman for poor America.

Poverty was his election theme and, when he bowed out of the race after Super Tuesday, Senator Clinton worked hard to inherit his base.

Theatrical stroke

But Mr Edwards has now endorsed Barack Obama - and he did it just when Senator Obama needed it most.

He gave a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the home of the Reagan Democrats, the epicentre of a tanking economy.

What is more, the endorsement was air-dropped straight into the prime-time evening network news.

Blue-collar workers have tended to vote for Mrs Clinton

It was a masterful stroke of theatre and, if Mr Edwards now campaigns actively on Mr Obama's behalf, it could boost the African-American senator's chances with working-class voters.

And Mr Obama needs that boost.

The agonising, long-winded, costly fight for a mandate amongst the myriad tribes of America reminds me of the meticulous testing stipulated by the Federal Drug Administration for new medicines.

Which pill should the Democrats go for?

The blue-tinged, slim-line "Obama" with the medical disclaimer that if "this infatuation lasts more than five hours immediately consult a physician".

Or the chunkier, grittier, yet sugar-coated "Hillary", with the warning: "Side effects include indigestion and vivid flashbacks to the 1990s."

Whichever pill prevails, no patients - or electors - can claim that their group has not been included in the harrowing testing process.

Although the Democratic Party is virtually certain to opt for the Obama, the drugs trials have thrown up a problem that is becoming ever more acute.

Obama's problem

West Virginia - state slogan "wild and wonderful" - may not be the political epicentre of America, but in general elections it has voted for every winning presidential candidate for over a century.

The man who started the nomination marathon by wooing predominantly white Iowa is ending it by failing to seduce predominantly white West Virginia Send us your comments

The people of this state can pick a winner, it seems, and last night they rejected Mr Obama as fiercely as any peanut allergy - Mrs Clinton won the state by 67% to 26%.

The whopping margin does not, of course, translate into the necessary shift in pledged delegates.

And it may well leave the now all-important superdelegates cold.

But the numbers and the exit polls indicate that Barack Obama has a problem.

The man who started the nomination marathon by wooing predominantly white Iowa is ending it by failing to seduce predominantly white West Virginia.

Race has become an issue.

How do we know? Because in their exit polls the voters told us so.

On a subject where honesty tends to be conspicuous by its absence, one in five voters told the pollsters that race was a factor in their decision-making process.

And a significant number of Hillary voters said they would not vote for Mr Obama if he was the nominee.

No Democratic nominee can win without the support of African Americans.

But nor can they prevail if white, blue-collar voters opt for John McCain - that is the Democratic Party's biggest conundrum.

Terrible time

I was not in West Virginia this week, but I did go to Michigan.

This is the swing state where - in the 1980s - working-class Democrats were persuaded by Ronald Reagan's homespun message of gritty optimism to give their traditional party the cold shoulder.

The Reagan Democrats have been migrating back to their old fold in recent years.

In the last election Michigan narrowly voted for the lugubrious Democratic candidate, John Kerry.

Today there are even more reasons for Michiganders to elect a candidate from the party which does not occupy the White House.

The state is having a terrible time.

Mr Obama will almost certainly be the Democrats' presidential nominee

The Iraq war is particularly unpopular because it is viewed as a waste of resources that could have been spent on a tanking economy.

The car industry has ground to a halt, fuel prices are at a record high and the property market is in rapid decline.

To sample the discontent I went to Grand Rapids, a city as genteel, wholesome and unexciting as its most famous son, the late Gerald Ford.

Broadway Avenue might as well have been called Foreclosure Alley.

Abandoned houses have been left to commune with unkempt nature.

The grass is no longer being cut, windows are broken. Decrepit For Sale and For Rent signs bleat for attention.

I came across Geoff, who - in a lonely battle to keep up appearances - was edging his mother's garden.

It was one of a handful of houses that looked inhabited and cared for.

The flower pots overflowed with geraniums.

In Washington DC, this five-bedroom house would have been on the market for well over $1m (£500,000).

Here it was not selling for a meagre $80,000 (£40,000).

Prime argument

Michigan has every reason to fling its arms around the Democratic candidate, whoever it is.

But Geoff, a long-distance truck driver with too little work, was only buying Hillary's message.

"If Obama is our candidate, I am voting for McCain."

Why? "Lack of experience. He's too young. He hasn't done much. He's never suffered like John McCain did during the Vietnam War. And, yes, race is a part of it too."

Unprompted, Geoff referred to the Reverend Wright issue.

It was a refrain we heard over and over again.

[Mr Obama] radiates an unruffled poignancy and wields the gentle sword of language with precision

For white working-class voters in Michigan, Barack Obama represents something too alien and ethereal.

If this candidate ends up losing Michigan and West Virginia, he also runs the risk of waving goodbye to Pennsylvania, Ohio, his beloved Iowa and thus the White House.

This of course is Mrs Clinton's prime argument, which she continues to hammer on the anvil of wobbly super-delegates.

However persuasive it may sound, it is nevertheless not enough to overturn the maths of the contest so far.

Unguided missile

It would be a gross injustice, a flagrant abuse of the agreed rules of the game, if this argument managed to render irrelevant the majority of delegates and the popular vote in the Democratic race.

It would open the Democrats up to the same charge that they themselves levelled against the Republicans after the Florida recount: the popular vote counted for nothing.

It also ignores one other fact.

There is a reason why Mr Obama, who started off as the outsider in this race, has come as far as this.

At his best he is able to sway people.

He radiates an unruffled poignancy and wields the gentle sword of language with precision.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain by comparison is an unguided missile.

He has grown in stature because he has remained largely unheard amid the cacophony of warring Democrats.

In a few months from now, he will have to compete head-to-head against the man who managed to beat the most awesome campaign machine in modern American history.

Mr McCain likes to say that he is as old as dirt.

Who knows at this stage whether his vintage experience will come to seem like old age and fatigue, his grittiness like grumpiness, his maverick status like a health-warning of unpredictability?

In this complex game of perceptions, anything is possible.

Beware and stick to the majority maths - numbers don't lie.

Matt Frei is the presenter of BBC World News America which airs every weekday at 0030 BST on BBC News and at 0000 BST (1900 ET / 1600 PT) on BBC World News and BBC America (for viewers outside the UK only).

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