The Fierce Urgency of Indiana for Obama

In the wake of Hillary Clinton's rock-solid Pennsylvania victory, David Axelrod, the able chief strategist of Barack Obama's campaign, attempted to minimize the political significance of his candidate's having been overwhelmingly rejected by Pennsylvania's working-class voters: "Let's understand — the white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections. This is not new. Democratic candidates don't rely on these votes."

Whoa! First, to be accurate, Bill Clinton, the only Democratic president since FDR to win re-election, did — narrowly — carry white, working-class voters twice. Second, David, we are talking here about Obama's having lost badly working-class voters who are registered Democrats and who voted in a Democrats-only primary. Third, earlier in 2008, Obama had run quite strongly among these very same voters.

In Connecticut, Obama had carried white men by a three-to-two margin as well as labor union voters. In Wisconsin, he won white men by 63 percent to 34 percent and carried 55 percent of all working-class voters with family incomes under $75,000. In both Maryland and Virginia, he won voters in households with union members by 20 percent, and carried white men, as well as working-class voters, in households earning under $75,000 by more than 20 percent.

Barack Obama must figure out again how to win white voters with household incomes under $75,000. He must do so in Indiana, a state where, in his favor, many voters already know him as a neighboring U.S. senator, not just as some stranger with an exotic name. He even has a model to guide him in his urgent quest.

The last time the Indiana presidential primary really mattered was 1968, when the state's amiable Democratic governor, Roger Branigin, campaigned with the formidable backing of the state party organization as the favorite-son stand-in for, first, President Lyndon Johnson and then, following LBJ's withdrawal, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

The better-educated and anti-(Vietnam) war voters already had their favorite in Minnesota Sen.

Eugene McCarthy. That left the late-entering Sen. Robert Kennedy, confronting charges of ruthlessness and opportunism, with political problems.

Robert Kennedy was the Change Candidate that year. Both the Establishment and many not in the Establishment — but who resented and who resisted the change they knew a Kennedy victory would mean — opposed him vehemently. Like Obama now, Kennedy did have a money advantage over his opponents.

More than a few Hoosiers were made uneasy by the passion and excitement Kennedy generated in his public appearances. (Sound familiar?) Almost alone among American politicians of his era, RFK had a personal sense of identification with the casualties of the American experiment — the forgotten and the marginalized.

In the informed judgment of pollster Peter Hart, "America in 1968 was full of anger, while America in 2008 is wracked with anxiety."

In that angry year, some Indiana voters who heard Kennedy were inspired. Some were engaged. Others were critical, even hostile. But those who heard him were rarely indifferent. He could mock himself, like the day when a sudden gust blew away a sheet of paper and he quipped: "That's my entire farm program. Please get it back."

But what Robert Kennedy's winning campaign did in Indiana — and what Barack Obama's must do now — according to Peter Hart, was "to capture his time. Ultimately, the campaign was about who we are and who we can become."

Those of us privileged to hear that remembered passion, delivered often too rapidly, will never forget his summons to heal the divisions among us between races, between generations, between classes and on the war. "We are a great country, an unselfish country," he told his audiences, followed always with the quote from George Bernard Shaw: "Some people see things as they are and say: Why? I dream things that never were and say: Why not?"

Indiana is the test. By once again inspiring voters and by reminding us who we are and who, with common sacrifice, we can become, he, too, can win Indiana and, with that victory, the presidential nomination.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 MARK SHIELDS