Union Dues
Barack Obama hasn't made the sale with blue-collar Democrats or Hillary supporters. And some Democrats are worried.
To use a familiar phrase, Barack Obama needs Tom Buffenbarger to get fired up and ready to go. The fact that he isn't should worry voters eager to see the Democrats to win in November.
I ran into Buffenbarger in a hotel lobby, as I was moving around town earlier today, trying to get a sense of things. He is precisely what you would think a Tom Buffenbarger would be: a thickly built, balding, blunt-speaking guy with a firm handshake and a sports coat you'd never see in the pages of GQ magazine. His roots and job are Buffenbargeresque: the blue-collar precincts of Cincinnati; the presidency of the Machinists Union.
Buffenbarger was a Hillary Clinton guy. Now he is an Obama guy. But he is worried--worried that the Obama-Biden campaign still doesn't get it about the voters he represents and the part of the country he comes from. "I'm not sure they have anyone on the inside of that campaign who really knows my voters," he told me.
Besides inside advice, the Obama campaign, in the view of many here, hasn't been as diligent as they should be in wooing and winning Clinton delegates. Some Obama supporters in states Obama won--Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, to cite one example--have worked hard on their own to reel in their local Clintonites. But neither Obama nor his top lieutenants have reached much beyond the Clinton donor base to reach out directly to individual delegates.
These two trends--blue-collar worries, and reluctant Clinton supporters who feel they are being ignored--cross in a particular geographical area: the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's a cliché of the campaign but nevertheless true: this election battle with John McCain will be won or lost in those places, where less educated, Roman Catholic blue-collar workers still form the backbone of the traditional Democratic Party.
Said another union official, who did not want to be quoted: "The fact that we are fighting tooth and nail in Pennsylvania--when we shouldn't have to be, given George Bush's record--tells you everything you need to know about this election."
What does Obama need to do and say?
"He needs to challenge America again," Buffenbarger told me. "He needs to say that we are going to rebuild the middle class and renew our technological base." Obama can't merely promise to repeat the policies of Bill Clinton, he said. The former president was too willing to sign trade deals, he said, and too willing to sometimes let Wall Street get its way.
There was a fair amount of talk among insiders that Obama's economic plans and language remain vague--an argument summarized in The New York Times Magazine by influential reporter David Leonhardt. "Just read that article and you will see what the problem is they have to solve."
In another hotel lobby I ran into another Clinton person--a higher-up who had gotten on board, but who remained skeptical of Obama's ability to make the sale. "The best thing we have going for us is George Bush," said this person, who was busy raising money to pay off Hillary's debt and did not wanted to be quoted by name. "That's how we win: Bush equals McCain. That's going to have be the way we win, the only way we win, this election."
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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