The View From Ohio
Will voters in the economically ravaged Buckeye State ‘get over’ race and support Obama?
By David Moberg (CLEVELAND)
A woman looks over her absentee ballot during early voting on Oct. 1 in Toledo, Ohio. ‘No fault’ absentee voting allows any registered Ohioan to vote in the presidential election between Oct. 1 and the close of polls on Nov. 4.
Unions have found that leaflets and phone calls are not the best ways to deal with unconscious racism against Obama. ‘The only way to do that is with conversations,’ says one union leader.
Winning Ohio will be important, maybe even essential, for Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain this fall. And the decision will likely come down to the wire, depending in part on wavering voters like Ruth Santo, a retired department store manager living in Rocky River, a flag-festooned middle- to upper-middle income suburb of Cleveland.
Concerned about the economy and healthcare, and critical of President Bush, Santo worries most about young people like her grandchildren.
“I don’t even know what they’re going to have,” she says. “So many things are changing so horribly.”
Obama has some good ideas, she says, but she thinks McCain is “a bit of a rebel” who would also bring change. “I think Obama is too inexperienced, but then I think John McCain is too old. I told my husband I don’t know how I want to vote.”
Obama and McCain remained locked in a close battle for Ohio, according to polls throughout September, even as Obama took a widening lead in national polls, like those of the New York Times and Washington Post. But some studies, such as an early September Ohio Poll, showed nearly a quarter of the state’s voters are “up for grabs,” undecided or open to change.
On balance, prospects look good for Obama, but uncertainty revolves around the role that white voters’ misgivings — conscious and unconscious — about Obama’s skin color will play in the election. In particular, can Obama and his supporters convince enough older white voters that he, more than McCain, can change the economy to help people like them and their grandchildren, despite their discomfort — stoked by Republicans — about who he is as a person?
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http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3969/the_view_from_ohio
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