There has been a lot of attention paid to the amazing youth turnout that Obama has managed in Iowa and NH and with good reason. It's a terrific development for the country and Democrats. They are the future and it's good to see them voting with us, even if it's not my primary candidate that's getting them out there.
Obama did not do well among older and lower income voters. Clinton won these. If the sampling I spoke to in NH is at all representative, Obama is not connecting at all with these voters, just as Clinton has struggled to connect with younger voters. This could be as big a problem for him if he is the nominee as the youth vote could be for Clinton. Because it wasn't clear to me that these voters would come out for Obama like they came out for Clinton.
The older voters, particularly women, love Clinton and so she's probably always going to do well among them. Many of the older voters are every bit as passionate about Clinton as younger voters are about Obama, it's just harder to show public displays of political passion when you're 70. But I was struck by how dismissive many of them were of Obama. Not hostile, just dismissive and it didn't strike me as being racially motivated. I think Obama's problem is that older voters know Hillary Clinton. If you ask them what she has done they can tell you in general, even if not in detail - she worked on healthcare, she's helped women and children. None of them could tell you what Obama has done.
Now, I might find Obama's resume a little thin, but at least I know what he's done. These folks have no idea. I suspect many had never heard of him until last year because, really, before then he wasn't a national player. They might know about his 2004 convention speech or maybe even his Iraq war speech, but these are just speeches. Lobbying bills or transparency bills are not exactly huge news to the average American. They're popular with the young and highly educated, but that's about it. And folks in NH are not going to know anything about his work in the Illinois legislature.
To most of the older folks I dealt with Obama was some guy who talks nice and suddenly wants to be president. They are completely bewildered that anyone thinks that's a good idea because in their view, he hasn't DONE anything. Now, obviously, I only spoke to a small sampling and most were at least Clinton leaners, but if you look at her margin of victory among seniors, she's clearly connecting in a way he isn't.
I am not at all sure some of the seniors that I canvassed come out and vote for Obama and, just as Clinton is taking steps to become more appealing to the young, Obama needs to take steps to introduce himself to older voters.
As for low income voters, I think Obama has fallen too much in love with inspirational message at the expense of the nuts and bolts of what he's going to do (just as Clinton at times has focused too much on the nuts and bolts, without providing a broader narrative). Showing up on a 30-year-old single mother's doorstep and promising to change the way Washington works is like showing up on my doorstep and promising to change the weather on Mars. What you're proposing might be good for my long-term interests, but it's so far removed from my day-to-day life it's not going to have much of an impact.
The lower income folks we spoke to want tangible things. They want healthcare. They want universal pre-K. They want a candidate who is going to improve their lives, not Washington, D.C. I might get how improving Washington, D.C., could improve their lives, but that promise is too far away when you don't make enough money to have a phone line in your apartment. Not to mention, they've heard it all before. I honestly don't see these folks, most of whom have sketchy voting records, showing up for Obama right now either.
It seems to me that Democrats are getting high turnout because Clinton and Obama are using their vast resources to turn out different sections of the electorate. The trick will be to continue to turn out both groups of people in November 2008 for only one of them.
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