Issue of race still a wild card as Democrats pick a nominee

From staff and wire reports

Just when it seemed the Democratic Party was close to anointing Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again in a big general election state this week, dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters.

Obama remains ahead of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in delegates, in the popular vote and in national polls, and Clinton certainly has her own problems trying to herd Democrats into her corner.

But the composition of support for Clinton - or the makeup of those voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Obama - ha s Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race might be playing.

"I'm sure there is some of that," said David Axelrod, Obama's senior political adviser, as he considered how race is playing among voters in late-primary states. He said Clinton's biggest advantage has been among older voters, "and I think there is a general inclination on the part of the older voters to vote for what is more familiar."

Axelrod added, "Here's a guy named Barack Obama, an African American guy, relatively new. That's a lot of change."

Some say the problem Obama faces with middle-class, white and elderly voters is not severe. Women, who make up a substantial portion of three demographics, are in large number supporting Clinton's effort to become the first woman nominated for president. David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, predicted most of the women backing Clinton - particularly the middle-class workers - easily would back Obama in a general election.

While arguably critical to determining the viability of Obama's candidacy, the role of race is difficult to disentangle from the other strands of the political debate surrounding him, encompassing sensitive topics such as values, elitism, ideology and experience.

Although some polling evidence hints at the depth of racial attitudes in this country and the obstacles Obama faces winning white voters, it has historically proved challenging to measure how racial attitudes factor into voter decisions. Respondents don't tend to announce to announce to pollsters that they will not vote for a candidate because he or she is black.

It is also hard to discount the fact that Obama has arrived at this place in his candidacy after winning big victories in very white states. The crowds at his rallies are as white as any that one might find at a Clinton rally, and there are many analysts in both parties who believe racial attitudes in this country are changing at a breakneck pace, particularly among younger voters, making it risky to impose models from even four years ago on this unusual election.

"Where is the problem?" said U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat who represents portions of Norfolk and Portsmouth and avidly supports Obama.

Scott noted that Obama has won 16 of the past 19 primaries against Clinton. "He's winning everything in sight," he said. "How many more does he have to win before someone gives him credit for winning?"

Complicating things even further are the high-profile episodes that have rattled his campaign.

Obama's remark at a private fundraiser in San Francisco about bitter blue-collar workers "clinging to" guns and religion was the kind of assertion that would be damaging to a candidate of any race.

Inflammatory statements made by Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is black, have been seized on by Republicans to present Obama as unpatriotic. An advertisement released Wednesday by Republicans in North Carolina included that portrayal.

The statement by his wife, Michelle, that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country," has been invoked by Republicans in an attempt to portray Obama as culturally unlike the people he is asking to vote for him, a historically potent line of attack.

"Race is intertwined with a broader notion that he is not 'one of us,' " said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, which conducted an extensive examination of voter attitudes, particularly among Democrats who have an unfavorable view of Obama. "They react negatively to people who are seen as different."

Geoff Garin, a senior strategist for Clinton, said that while race might have had some role in Obama's problems in Pennsylvania, his biggest problem was that these events underlined the image of him being out-of-touch.

"Voters came into the campaign with pretty big question marks about whether Obama gets them," Garin said. "And those comments reinforced doubts that people had."

At the same time, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, has sought to portray Obama as ideologically out of step with much of the country, focusing on his views on tax cuts, health care and the war in Iraq.

Bositis said McCain might be open to same attacks this fall of being out of touch with voters. He noted that President Bush's policies on Iraq and the economy - largely endorsed by McCain - are highly unpopular.

Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder said Obama is doing a good job dealing with racial questions. Wilder, in 1990, became the nation's first elected black governor when he took control of Virginia's state government.

"Let's not kid ourselves again, the issue of race will not disappear; but I don't think it will predominate," Wilder said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg News Service.

Wilder said Obama is "struggling" for white middle-class votes. "I don't think that struggle will emanate through the general election because they have far more in common with him than they do with the Republican candidate," he said.

"The big question about Barack Obama from the very beginning has been: Is he safe?" said Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster not affiliated with any of the campaigns. "Safe in terms of both the cultural values that he has and about whether he is strong enough to be commander in chief."

For Obama, race presents two potential problems: Voters opposing Obama simply because he is black and Democrats who will not support Obama because they do not think a black man can win a general election.

The results in Pennsylvania suggested problems exist. A poll of Democratic voters conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press found that Clinton drew 63 percent of the white vote while Obama drew 90 percent of the black vote, mirroring a pattern that has been found in many other states. More strikingly, the poll found that 18 percent of Democrats said race mattered to them in this contest - and just 63 percent of those voters said they would support Obama in a general election.

There is also a flip side to the increasing racial polarization in Democratic voting patterns: Should Clinton win the nomination, some Democrats said, there is a risk that she would be unable to mobilize black voters to support her if she won the nomination in a way that was viewed by black voters as being unfair. That might be a particular risk given the backlash to some of the things former President Bill Clinton has said about Obama.

The exit poll found that 69 percent of white Democrats would vote for Obama in a general election campaign over McCain; 73 percent of blacks said they would vote for Clinton over McCain.

On Wednesday, Obama downplayed the racial aspects of the coalition Clinton used to defeat him in Pennsylvania.

"Our problem has less to do with white working-class voters," Obama told reporters Wednesday in Indiana. "In fact, the problem is that - to the extent that there is a problem - is that older voters are very loyal to Sen. Clinton."

But the real test might come in the general election, should he win the Democratic nomination. Pennsylvania and Ohio are going to be two critical states this fall, and it is going to be difficult for any Democrat to win those states without support from the Democrats that Obama is struggling to bring onto his bandwagon.

This story was compiled from reports by The New York Times and staff writer Warren Fiske.