Obama loses 42 percent of Kentucky, Arkansas primary vote. Should he worry?
For President Obama, the good news out of last night鈥檚 Kentucky and Arkansas primaries was that he won in both states. The bad news was that he did not win as triumphantly as one might expect, given that he鈥檚 the incumbent US chief executive.
In Kentucky, 42 percent of Democratic voters checked off 鈥渦ncommitted鈥� on their ballot. In Arkansas, 42 percent opted for a little-known Tennessee attorney, John Wolfe.
Two weeks ago, a Texas prison inmate named Keith Judd won 41 percent of the vote in West Virginia鈥檚 primary. What鈥檚 going on here? Should the Obama campaign team be worried about lackluster results versus non-entity opponents?
Well, no and yes. No, in the sense that it鈥檚 no surprise Mr. Obama is unpopular in Southern states and Appalachia. He鈥檚 a lock for the Democratic nomination, so Democrats in this region feel free to express their opinion via protest votes.
Kentucky and Arkansas are going to be Romney states in November. Obama won鈥檛 campaign in either place (much). He鈥檚 already written them off. So last night鈥檚 results were a chronicle of an embarrassment foretold. The opinion of some left-leaning analysts was that the media should move along here, nothing to see.
鈥淵ou will forgive me, I hope, a lack of excitement about the 鈥榮tory鈥� of the president鈥檚 weakness in these two states (and in other border states with large fossil-fuel energy industries and relatively few African-Americans), since I鈥檝e been reading about it since the 2008 primaries,鈥� Wednesday in the Washington Monthly鈥檚 Political Animal blog.
Part of the Southern resistance to Obama may be due to his race. White Democrats in this region, some D.C. Democrats say, just won鈥檛 vote for an African-American White House candidate. But unhappiness with Obama鈥檚 policies, including his stricter environmental standards, plays into it, notes Chris Cillizza in his Washington Post blog The Fix. So does discontent with the national Democratic Party.
鈥淥verall, showings in Kentucky and Arkansas are certainly an embarrassment for Obama; the question is whether they portend a real enthusiasm problem in the fall,鈥� .
As Cillizza notes, the key issue here may really be whether Kentucky and Arkansas are a portent of trouble for Obama in North Carolina. North Carolina is a crucial swing state with relatively few swing voters: It鈥檚 balanced almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats. In that situation, the defection of a party faction could spell trouble for either side.
Beyond North Carolina, Tuesday night鈥檚 results could also indicate that the Obama team has to work harder on its white working-class problem. That part of the electorate will almost certainly break for Mitt Romney in November. White working-class voters have been disproportionately hurt by the economic downturn, and they're resistant to what they see as Obama鈥檚 liberal health-care reforms and support of gay marriage.
鈥淥bama will never carry white working class. But he can鈥檛 afford to lose it by massive margins, either,鈥� writes University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato Tuesday night on his Twitter feed.
In that sense, , Democrats who think Tuesday night鈥檚 results are a non-story are 鈥渨histling past a potential graveyard.鈥�
