Citing grim jobs report, Obama reaches out to blue-collar voters

Senator Barack Obama, trying to build on his show of strength at the Democratic National Convention, is targeting one of his biggest weaknesses: his standing with white, blue-collar voters.

While Republicans convened in St. Paul to anoint Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as their nominees, Obama this week zeroed in on the Rust Belt communities where he struggled during the primaries - courting rural voters at a farm in Dillonvale, Ohio (population 800), holding a barbecue with labor leaders in Monroe, Mich. (population 22,000), and leading an economic discussion in York, Pa. (population 41,000).

Yesterday, at a glass plant in Duryea, Pa. (population 4,600), just outside Scranton, Obama highlighted a new Labor Department report showing another 84,000 jobs lost in August and the highest national unemployment rate in five years. He vowed to revitalize manufacturing and mocked McCain for saying re cently that the fundamentals of the economy are "strong."

"What's more fundamental than having a job?" Obama asked the workers.

His trip, which continues today with a planned stop in Terre Haute, Ind., reflects Obama's strategy to target demographic groups and regions that were strongholds of rival Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race, and are crucial to winning swing states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in November. Those three states have 58 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.

"They realized that they needed this segment of the population - they can't just focus on Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati," said Mayor Mike Taylor of New Philadelphia, Ohio, where Obama campaigned Wednesday at the same rural college where Bill Clinton stumped for his wife earlier this year. "There's a lot of voters in the rest of the state, and if they want to carry the state they have to go out and see those people."

Obama has his work cut out. Most of the swing-state communities he toured this week went big for Clinton - places such as Luzerne County, Pa., where she beat Obama 75 percent to 25 percent in April - and will not automatically cast a vote for him just because he's a Democrat .

Interviews with local voters, activists, and political leaders suggest that while Obama has a lot of ground to cover, he is making significant inroads among such voters, thanks to his visits, his tapping of Clinton's political network, and his well-received speech in Denver accepting the Democratic nomination.

"There's a degree of enthusiasm there that encourages me," said Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio, a key Clinton supporter in the primaries who has been campaigning for Obama in the state's rural stretches.

McCain's campaign, knowing the election could be won in the working-class communities of the Midwest, is making a big push of its own. One of the first stops McCain and Palin made yesterday after the convention was Sterling Heights, Mich., in Macomb County, often called ground zero for the "Reagan Democrats" who crossed over in the 1980s to help Ronald Reagan win two terms.

Republican presidential candidates have won a majority of white voters nationally in at least the last three elections, but the margin is what matters.

Republican Bob Dole barely beat Bill Clinton among whites in 1996, and Clinton scored a lopsided victory overall. President Bush won in 2000 and 2004 by winning white voters by double-digit percentages. In states such as Ohio, narrow losses for Democrats in rural and working-class neighborhoods combined with wide wins in more urban, liberal enclaves constitute a recipe for victory.

Obama's campaign says that, despite this week's concentration on traditional battlegrounds, it is still committed to running its broad, so-called 50-state strategy designed to put traditionally Republican states in play.

"The voters of states like Colorado, Montana, Virginia, and Nevada have made it clear that this race will not be decided on the traditional political map," said spokeswoman Jen Psaki. "We have invested staff, resources, and dozens of visits to these states because we believe that we can not only compete in traditionally red states, but that we can win."

In targeting blue-collar and rural voters, Obama's campaign is using both a policy message and unprecedented on-the-ground tactics.

Midwestern Democrats say they have been heartened to see Obama use his convention speech and recent appearances to emphasize policy positions - including his prescriptions for the economy and proposed investments in so-called clean-coal technology - over abstract promises of hope and change.

"I'm glad he's being more precise, more direct in what he's saying," Strickland said. "I think that's absolutely necessary."

In Ohio on Wednesday, Obama re-created the tableau that worked so well for him last year in Iowa: He was tieless, wearing a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, wiping sweat from his face; American flags hung in the background; voters sat on hay bales.

"We're going to talk about the issues that make a difference in your lives every single day," he said in Dillonvale, touting his own working-class upbringing. "Part of the reason I care so deeply about this is this is where I come from."

Dan Surra, a state lawmaker from central Pennsylvania who has been helping Obama since the primaries, said he still hears objections from rural voters about Obama; some, he said, admit they simply will not vote for a black candidate. But he said things are improving, partly because of the strong endorsements at the convention from Bill and Hillary Clinton.

"It was a tough sell, preconvention," Surra said. "I still think it's going to be hard here, but I really believe people are starting to learn more about Barack Obama and they're starting to listen to his message."

One is Denise Brooks, the Democratic chairwoman for Monroe County, Mich., and a former passionate Clinton supporter, whose grudge against Obama was intact when she arrived in Denver.

"When I got there, I thought, 'I can't do this. I can't do this,"' she said.

The Clintons persuaded her, though, and on Labor Day Brooks was one of a couple of hundred people at the Obama barbecue. She was blown away by the interest - another 500 people had to be turned away, she said.

"Monroe isn't Detroit," she said. "It isn't Toledo. It isn't Ann Arbor."

A Gallup poll released earlier this week showed that Obama has succeeded since the convention in winning over many such former Clinton devotees. Gallup surveys also show that Obama has closed the gap with McCain nationwide among white voters without a college degree. Tactically, Obama is trying to build grassroots support in ways no other presidential campaign has.

In Ohio, for example, the campaign is following the blueprint of Strickland, who won in 2006 with a strategy that emphasized competing in every county. Obama's campaign has more than 50 offices and plans to open more. It has an outreach program to hunters and sportsmen.

"They're just starting to finally get the message to the white, rural, middle-class voters up to full RPMs," said Paul Thoma, a Democratic activist, farmer, and telecommunications project manager from Monroe, Mich.

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.