http://www.gallup.com/poll/107110/Obamas-Support-Similar- Kerrys-2004.aspx
Obama's Support Similar to Kerry's in 2004 Similar levels of support exist across white, black, blue-collar voters
by Frank Newport
> My point in posting that analysis ...was
> to refute the myth that there's something transformative about the
> Obama coalition. That it looks demographically identical to Kerry's
> 2004 vote is the very opposite of transformative.
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I don't think this poll tells us very much about the nature of the Obama
campaign one way or another.
It's to be expected that Obama's support would look like very much like Kerry's - or, for that matter, that of any other Democratic candidate running against a Republican in a general election. The social and political differences between the two parties are much more pronounced at the base than at the top, and these divisions express themselves in the results, which vary little from one election to another. In the primaries, the candidates for the nomination assemble rival coalitions, but these are hardly a foretaste of the general.
That Clinton has the support of white workers inside the DP and Obama of black workers doesn't mean, as the Clinton campaign likes to pretend, that Hillary would have significantly more success with white workers against McCain or, conversely, that Obama would have much more success among blacks. The differences would be marginal. In the wake of the civil rights movement, the Republicans have gotten the larger share of the white working class vote while blacks have overwhelmingly voted Democratic. If there is a departure from the norm this year, it will result from large numbers of embittered Clinton supporters abandoning the DP (doubtful) or socially conservative white workers deserting the Republicans in an economc downturn (more likely).
In this larger context, Obama's campaign has neither been "transformative" nor "typical". The really salient fact about the election to date has been the massive scale of the Democratic turnout for the primaries in marked contrast to the dispiritedness of the Republican base, all owing to the rather abrupt transformation of the political climate in the US. The 2004 election occured against the backdrop of 9/11, when national security fears and patriotic fervour were still high enough to give Bush his margin of victory. Today, four years later, Iraq and Katrina have exposed the ineptness of the Bush administration, there is a widespread perception, warranted or not, that American economic and military power is in decline, and fears of environmental and economic collapse are current.
The Obama campaign has largely been the beneficiary rather than the agent of the deepened antagonism to Bush and yearning for change, especially among the young. Obama has ridden the zeitgeist because of his age and brief tenure in Congress. It has fortuitously allowed him to enter the race not saddled with the same political baggage as his opponent, notably her vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq, anathema to most rank and file Democrats. That's why the Clinton strategy based on exposing Obama's lack of experience has not been able to block his ascendency, and has, in fact, been turned to his advantage.
Acknowledging that Obama is lifesize, however - and I've seen no evidence that anyone on the list thinks otherwise - shouldn't obscure that he is a very astute politician whose campaign for change, however nebulously stated and however uncertain the outcome, is on the whole the most promising development in US politics in decades, and should be encouraged on that basis alone. I think most outside observers affected by the US election feel the same way.