A Model for Obama?
It's always hazardous to analogize too aggressively from one election to another. But the scale of the union-led victory Tuesday in the drive to repeal Republican Gov. John Kasich's anti-collective bargaining legislation in Ohio is bound to encourage Democrats who want President Obama to pursue a class-conscious populist appeal in 2012.
The referendum repealed legislation that the Republican State House and Senate approved without a single Democratic vote and that Kasich signed last March; the bill sharply curtailed the collective bargaining rights of public employees (including police officers and fire fighters, who are often exempted from similar Republican bills), and imposed cutbacks on pay and benefits. Overall, just over three-fifths of voters on Tuesday backed the repeal, in a prototypical swing state where Republicans swept in 2010.
As impressive as the depth of the win was its breadth - at least according to a survey of voters conducted for the AFL-CIO from November 6 to 8 by Hart Research Associates. Such a survey isn't typically as thorough as an actual exit poll since it doesn't canvass as many people. (The AFL-CIO survey polled 1,015 voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.) But the survey, released Wednesday afternoon, offers the best picture available of the coalition that overturned Kasich's prized legislation:
--The repeal campaign won broad support. Fully 86 percent of union members voted to repeal, but so did 52 percent of non-union voters. A solid majority of every age group voted to repeal. Not only did 92 percent of liberals vote to repeal but so did a preponderant 70 percent of moderates. (Conservatives supported maintaining the law by almost two-to-one). Nearly three-fifths of independents voted for repeal, along with over nine-in-ten Democrats. Almost three-fifths of whites, as well as a big majority of minorities, voted to repeal.
--The repeal vote reached well into the groups that powered the Republican surge in 2010. A 54 percent majority of whites older than 60 voted to repeal, according to figures from the survey provided by Hart Research's Guy Molyneux. So did a 61 percent majority of whites without a college education. Even a 55 percent majority of non-college whites who do not belong to a union voted to repeal. All of those are groups that have not voted much in recent years for anything favored by Democrats. Even 30 percent of self-identified Republicans and one-fourth of voters who backed Kasich in 2010 voted to repeal.
The success of the repeal vote among the overlapping groups of senior and blue-collar whites - each of which, nationally, gave 63 percent of their votes to Republican House candidates in 2010, according to exit polls - might be the most striking result in the poll. For Democrats who want a class conscious message from Obama in 2012, it's evidence that these prodigal Democratic voters can still be reached with an edgy on-your-side appeal.
"The idea that you can get Democratic voters, not just young and African-American voters, but working class voters energized and excited about fighting for their economic interests is a lesson I hope the White House will take on this," said Molyneux, who polls extensively for labor unions. "What killed Kasich was the sense that he was looking out either for the rich and powerful or his own party's political interests. Either way he was not focused on helping average working families in Ohio. And I think that's what Obama needs to set up about his opponent - motives and concern and in whose interest they are going to govern."
Ohio's simultaneous passage of a mostly symbolic initiative rejecting the individual mandate in Obama's health care reform law is a reminder that Republicans will have powerful weapons to wield as well in the struggle for those white working class voters. (The individual mandate initiative actually passed by a wider margin than the referendum on collective bargaining for public employees.) And given the economy's condition, Molyneux acknowledges it is still "hard to see" Obama even matching, much less exceeding, the meager 40 percent of the vote he won in 2008 among non-college whites.
But, Molyneux says, given that the 2012 Republican agenda links rollbacks in social safety net programs like Medicare with tax cuts, much as Kasich did, Obama "could still get close" to his 2012 performance with the white working class. Even that might be an achievement given Obama's microscopic approval rating with those voters. But if the class-conscious Ohio repeal campaign genuinely offers Obama a roadmap to remaining competitive with more older and blue-collar whites, he can keep graying Rust Belt states like Ohio and Wisconsin in play - and reduce his need to repeat his 2008 breakthroughs in the diverse and fast growing new swing states across the Sun Belt.
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