Pivoting to Populism
By Ruth Marcus
Thursday, August 7, 2008; A21
ELKHART, Ind. -- Barack Obama is cranking up the populist rhetoric.
He'll sock oil companies with a windfall profits tax to give American families a $1,000 "energy rebate," he tells voters at a town hall meeting in Youngstown, Ohio, on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Obama says, John McCain would lavish "$4 billion more in tax breaks to the biggest oil companies in America -- including $1.2 billion to Exxon Mobil . . . a company that, last quarter, made the same amount of money in 30 seconds that a typical Ohio worker makes in a year."
This turn to populism is not an extreme political makeover. Rather, it's a distinct tonal shift as the Democratic presidential candidate finishes a trip through three swing states -- Michigan, Ohio and Indiana -- where blue-collar voters aren't necessarily on board. Listen to Obama, and you hear the distant strains of Al Gore 2000: "the people versus the powerful."
The traditional transition from primary to general election campaigning involves stepping gingerly, preferably unobtrusively, toward the center. Obama swiftly executed that pivot, from backing the warrantless wiretapping compromise to speaking supportively of a Supreme Court ruling expanding gun rights while criticizing another one that invalidated the death penalty for child rape.
But much as John McCain needs to cultivate his party's still-skeptical base, Obama needs to tend to the anxieties of blue-collar Democratic voters in states such as Ohio who voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in the primary. More broadly, he needs to speak to the cascading economic worries felt by voters of both parties, or no party at all.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/06/AR2008080602725_pf.html
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