Marie Cocco, writing in the Washington Post and Real Clear Politics, says that "Obama Needs to Ask for the Votes." It's at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/... Her main point is summed up here:
The question for Obama now is not whether he will ask for the votes of Democrats who failed to support him in the primaries -- that is, roughly half the 35 million people who cast ballots. I am assuming he will. The puzzlement is whether he understands that one reason these voters remain so cool to his candidacy is that as yet, he has never really asked for their votes -- and at times has been downright dismissive of them.
More below...
I have some comments on that essay, particularly this section:
Obama still does not seem to speak their language, nor, toward the tail end of the primary season, did he seek to speak with them at all. His campaign plane barely touched down in West Virginia and Kentucky, where he ceded both states to Clinton. Why the snub? On Tuesday night, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, was touting the emergence of a changing Democratic Party chock-full of new voters. But why convey, even inadvertently, such dismissiveness toward the old?
This is the sort of slight Clinton may have had in mind when she riffed on Tuesday night about "what does Hillary want?" One of the items on her list: "I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be invisible."
First, about West Virginia and Kentucky: Cocco says that Obama "snubbed" those states. The word "snub" has the connotation of spurning disdainfully, or rejecting something that is unlikeable... I think that's an incorrect characterization of what they were doing. Let me add some perspective to this.
Obama was behind in those states, and never had an expectation of winning them in the first place (refer to the Obama campaign's much-discussed/leaked Excel spreadsheet with their election projections).
In both primary and general elections, it is common practice for political campaigns to marshall their resources for those places they can win, and not expend them on places they will lose. That's why, for example, you see a very minimal presence by Democratic presidential candidates in places like Mississippi and Alabama - it would be a waste of time.
What the Obama campaign did was not a snub of KY and WV, but rather, a recognition that their scarce resources would be better served in other places. If Clinton was in Obama's situation, she would have done the same thing.
Here's what Obama was doing: campaigning in Florida and Michigan, two states where he hadn't visited much. Obama probably NEEDS to win Michigan in the GE, and a victory in Florida would be huge. I think Cocco would agree with me that it was much more important at that time for Obama to start establishing himself in those states, which he are very important for the general election, as opposed to spending time in West Virginia and Kentucky, which were not important for his primary nomination.
RE: Axelrod's comment: "But why convey, even inadvertently, such dismissiveness toward the old? " The answer is, if he hadn't been speaking inadvertently, he would never have said that!!!
But seriously: Clinton's comment that "I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be invisible" was needlessly divisive. The premise of the comment is that Obama and his campaign disrespect, don't hear and don't care about the people who voted for Clinton.
This is just plain ridiculous. I am willing to grant that as of yet, Obama hasn't bonded with blue collar people in SOME states. But I am certain that the Obama campaign is not as naive as Cocco appears to believe, or as disrespectful as Clinton seems to imply.
The evidence of this is Obama's recently announced plans to go to the Appalachian region of Virginia. (A move that was no doubt inspired by VA Senator's Jim Webb's comments about the possibilities of creating a coalition of blacks and lower class whites in the region.) If Obama could get over 40-45% of the vote there, who knows, maybe Virginia could be in play for the Democrats. We'll see.
My advice to Marie: give the Obama campaign a break, and a chance. It's been a long, hard-fought primary battle. The campaign staff are now facing the task of re-tooling their campaign for a long and arduous general election run. I believe they're smart enough to know that the things they did to win primaries and caucuses, will not be enough to win in a general election campaign. I look forward to them reaching out to all the groups who voted in the Democratic primaries, as well as independents. It remains to be seen how successful they will be, but I have no doubt about the effort.