Obama, the Working Class, and Health Care

Presidential-matchup polls have descended on us like Cecil DeMille's locusts since early June, and they have, from time to time, contained their share of idiosyncratic surprises: Obama up by double digits here, McCain then up by a point or two there.

But, in the main, they've offered some rather unextraordinary calls: It's Obama on the inside with a monotonous three-to-six point advantage. The only authentic amusement that comes with their successive release is the cable-network cluster of "This could change" punditry.

Yesterday, however, there finally came a poll that was authentically eyepopping as well. It was The Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University poll, which looked at white, black and brown 18-to-64-year-old workers who last year earned $27,000 or less.

The white workers, at least, were Hillary's exclusive "base." Remember? They were, in turn, Obama's Untouchables -- that vast cut across this great land of Nascar-loving, beer-guzzling, Bible-thumping, "Wheel"-watching, lily-white po' folk who had fallen in love with a Yale-educated millionairess but wouldn't look twice at The Black Man from Harvard. They would, instead, flock to lily-whitest McCain, no matter how much his Bush-Cheney policies dared them.

But, according to the WaPo/Kaiser/Harvard poll, it's already time to reformulate that running narrative, because among working-class whites "Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent" -- which is a parsec or two outside the margin of error -- "and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate."

Furthermore, among those whites who feel "very" threatened financially, Obama's lead nearly doubles.

Well, so much for the Pat Buchanan-paleoconservative and Lanny Davis-centrist analyses that hustled a Veep Hillary as Obama's only salvation. Now, never mind; although they will, no doubt, remind us that this polling could change. And we thank them for that, in advance.

As for the ethnic subgroups of black and brown, the poll's findings revealed, of course, more of the lopsided same and were therefore exceptionally unnewsworthy. Nonetheless I simply never tire of the joy they bring (especially the following part I've italicized), so I reprint them here in all their familiarity:

"Among the African Americans polled, 92 percent chose Obama as the candidate more concerned with their problems; not a single black respondent said so about McCain, although 1 percent said 'both do.' Hispanics also sided with Obama on that question, favoring him by more than 40 percentage points as the more empathetic candidate."

When I read that I had an instant vision of a bonneted Mrs. McCain, 'Blazing Saddles'-like, screaming in frenetic defense of her husband: Won't somebody please help that poor man? Even one?

But so much for imaginary divagation. Back to the basics, of which there was one that I thought justified specific attention.

"Nearly two-thirds of the white workers surveyed," reported the Post, "want the government to make lower gas prices a 'top priority.'" No surprise there. And there was no surprise in what followed, either, except in the final, six-word dependent clause: "But slightly more, seven in 10, say government should focus on helping people like them find more affordable health insurance, a core component of Obama's campaign."

It is?

The Obama campaign may think it's a core component, and it may be telling the press it's a core component, and I appreciate that its candidate has been distracted of late by world tours and dueling drill bits, but the campaign is decidedly not telling voters that it's a core component. And Obama, it seems to me, from this point forward should be hammering this issue and framing its debate like there's nearly no other.

When seven out of 10 working-class whites and roughly two out of three of all voters are pleading for fundamental healthcare reform, and only one candidate is offering it, that candidate might, just might, want to make a central and thundering issue of it.

You can seize the day, Mr. Obama, by seizing the issue. Or at least that's what one poll suggests, whose issue-centered findings could very well break you out of that monotonous and precarious three-to-six point advantage in what is, after all, an underperformance.