Women Like Obama

Recently, Obama seems to have taken off in the polls, greatly increasing his advantage over Romney. Yet the strategies of the president are not at all secure. Of course, the latest data are psychologically encouraging for the White House. They not only describe a lead of seven points over the Republican candidate, according to CNN, and of nine, according to Fox News, but they push Obama above the symbolic sum of 50 percent: the president is [polling] at 52 percent of registered voters, while Romney is pinned to 45 (from CNN). And the score among independent voters is still more striking: 53 for Obama, 42 for Romney.

Another important factor for the Democratic team is the harmony between CNN and Fox News, the latter of which notoriously detests Obama. This is the big picture, and it is certainly rosy, but that is not what presidential strategists look at with the most interest. Many of the nationwide polls record the opinion of the electorate as a whole. However, the polls that truly count measure the orientation of every individual state, in particular the ten or twelve states – undecided and wavering – that will determine the result of the presidential election. It is in these states that both Obama and Romney have poured the bulk of their campaign funds into television commercials specifically designed for these demographics. It is also here that the due contenders engage personally with repeated speeches and events.

In these battleground states, the president is presented with a crucial voting bloc that continues to be hostile to him and prefers Romney: the white working class, or the Americans with no university degree and with family incomes between $30,000 and $100,000. In Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Romney has a solid hold on this part of the electorate, although his hold is weaker than John McCain, the Republican adversary of Obama, had four years ago. According to a poll from Quinnipiac University commissioned by CBS and The New York Times, which gives weight to these surveys, the majority of voters in these states have already decided who to vote for but still offer some glimmer of a willingness to change opinion. Hence the massive use, by the camps of both contenders, of aggressive and destructive television spots that attack their adversaries, aiming to prove [their opponent’s] vulnerability and to consolidate and strengthen the acquired advantage, small as it is.

For Obama, the good news is that within these uncertain states he has a clear advantage over Romney with another strategic voting bloc: women. While Obama struggles to make inroads among the white working class, Romney cannot be heard by women voters, especially those working women between 30 and 45 years old without family or children, the so-called “non-moms.” With the help of his wife Michelle, a special effort has been directed at this constituency to strengthen its support and, obviously, compensate for the lack of growth in Obama’s popularity with the white working class. Obama has done it once again, visiting Colorado for a rally alongside Sandra Fluke, a student from the Catholic Georgetown University who brought down upon herself a violent and vulgar campaign by the extreme right when she wrote a column about the free prescription pill, a provision of the new health reform. (Later the Supreme Court would give her this right, confirming in fact that contraception is covered by insurance, even by that of religious institutions.)

Additionally, after the women’s soccer team won the gold medal in London Thursday, the president was full of praise for the athletes. Naturally, the Obama strategy, directed at the female electorate – not only the single women, but also the mothers of families – also hits on the issue of the economy; he emphasizes the distance between the problems of the people and a person Obama calls “Romney Hood,” one who simply robs the poor to make the rich even richer. This is a message addressed also to “blue collar” Americans who continue to consider the president -as in an upside down world – an aristocratic elitist distant from their struggles. As if the super-millionaire Romney was better equipped to deal with their problems from his experience as head of a large firm, Bain Capital, never mind that he worked in the field of financial irresponsibly, the principal cause of the ongoing crisis.

Romney plays on these truly irrational sentiments, on the unspoken racism in white workers who continue to reject the idea of a black president who relaxes with golf in his sacred moments of leisure. And in fact, the demographic factor – that is, the strong presence of Hispanic, Asian and African-American voters – plays to Obama’s favor in the re-election of the first president of color but also weighs negatively on a certain white electorate because of their not-so-latent fear of becoming a minority. Obama, therefore, must juggle geography (the swing states) and demography (the ethnic composition of the electorate and also the so-called “gender gap”), searching to combine the best of the two factions.

On the front lines will be the invaluable help of Bill Clinton, who is very popular, as confirmed in recent polls, among the white working class, and also that of Joe Biden, also popular in that electoral bloc. But the real fear in the control room of the Obama campaign are three dates right next to election day, which are able to dispel even the best attempts to gain ground with working voters. On Sep 7, Oct 5, and Nov 2 (the Friday before the vote) periodic reports on the progress of unemployment will be released – figures that will dominate the front pages and the newscasts.

To what extent will that affect voters – whether positively or negatively – who have a job now but are afraid of losing it?