Bitterness, Hope And Obama In Western PA

By Carl Davidson
April 15, 2008

http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com

When I heard Hillary Clinton and John McCain claiming,
against Barack Obama's recent observation, that there
was no 'bitterness' among working-class voters in
Western Pennsylvania, I burst out laughing, 'they've
got to be kidding!'

Unfortunately they weren't, and now the cable news
punditry and right-wing talk radio has a new
diversionary cause of the week to dump on Obama in lieu
of serious discussion of policy and programs.

I'm born and bred in Beaver County, Western PA, which,
in 1960, was the most blue-collar county in the entire
country - steel, strip mines, and everything related to
both. My grandfather died in the mill, Jones & Laughlin
Steel, crushed by a crane, and another cousin met the
same fate a few decades later. My parents are both in
the Pennsylvania Bowlers Hall of Fame (and Barack would
do well to stick to basketball!). After a long stint in
New York City and Chicago, which were irresistible in
my youth, I'm now back home, living in Raccoon
Township.

Take it from me. There are a lot of bitter voters in
these mill towns and the townships outside them. If
they don't express it to the coiffured media, they do
to each other. It's easy to see why. The towns are
mostly empty, ravaged by deindustrialization. And the
brown fields where the mills once stood are so poisoned
grass won't even grow. After sitting empty for years,
the first new structure to go up not too long ago on
one near here was a new prison.

Does this mean it's a clear path for Obama? Not at all,
it's a rough climb, full of difficulties. But he's
doing better than anyone expected. None of the polls
are that trustworthy, because some tell the pollsters
the 'right' answer, while others, such as new youth
voters with only cell phones, are hard to find. Obama's
closing on Clinton, now by a five point spread. The
more people see him, the more they like him. But both
Democrats run neck-to-neck against McCain in November.
This is not a 'safe state' for anyone, anytime.

'White male identity politics' is the unpredictable
elephant in the room. I've talked with older blue
collar voters who claim John Edwards was their runaway
favorite, but are now leaning to John McCain, in spite
of their hatred for the war. White workers generally
split three ways, roughly proportional, between the
three candidates.

Younger working-class voters, male and female, white or
Black, are not so caught up in it, and they are Obama's
ace-in-the-hole. If his campaign can get them to the
polls in droves, he can win it. That's the long and
short of it, and if you can get here to help, please do
so. Everything counts.

The bitterness runs deep, favors no single candidate,
and comes in several varieties. Retired steelworkers
here had their pensions stolen by speculative capital,
winning only part of them back by hitting the streets.
There's also another kind of bitterness in
Pennsylvania's demographics. It's now one of the oldest
population areas in the country. My young nephews and
nieces, even with some local college degrees or courses
behind them, have a hard time finding work. Many young
people have moved away to Florida or California,
leaving older relatives behind. Here in Raccoon,
they're now shutting down the elementary school,
claiming 500 pupils doesn't justify the expense to keep
it open. It means an hour on the bus for youngsters
from a perfectly good school, and, yes, many parents
are bitter.

Aliquippa is the nearest town to me, known as home of
Mike Ditka and Tony Dorsett. In my youth, it was a
bustling blue-collar town of 20,000-some 10,000 workers
in the mill, a mixture of Serbs, Italians and African-
Americans. Now it's down to 6000, mostly poor and
Black. They were the hardest hit of all, lacking the
rural family homesteads to fall back on. Now
joblessness, crime and addiction take a very bitter
toll on the families still there, with nowhere to go.

Does this mean it's all bleak?  No, not at all,
although Hillary Clinton is just dissembling, or worse,
to assert that there's no bitterness, only resilience
and hope, in these towns. People here like to pull
themselves up independently whenever they can, like the
Scots-Irish and Germans who predominated here in the
1800s. Their class solidarity means they'll accept a
hand-up, and offer one, too. But they don't like hand-
outs at all, unless you're at death's door, which is
why their anti-'Fat Cat' populism also contains
antipathy to some features of liberalism. It's also why
Obama gets a standing ovation when he tells college
students he'll help, but challenges them to give back,
with community service work.

This blue-collar populism runs the political gamut-
left, center and right. You can get colorful examples
in the hot debates in the interactive pages of the
online edition of the largest daily paper, the Beaver
County Times. Pick any topic or candidate-you'll get
fierce denunciations of the rich man's war for oil,
combined with warnings against Hillary' 'socialism',
claims that Obama's a secret Muslim, and despair that
McCain's a clone of Bush.

In this lively public square, Obama or any candidate
would do well to discern the main themes. Don't get me
wrong. People here are open and friendly. They don't
expect you to agree with them, or vice versa. But they
do expect authenticity, so when you get out organizing,
speak from the heart, and don't put your head higher
than anyone else's, and expect the same in return.

At the top of their list is stopping the war now, since
it's preventing any solutions to anything else. Next,
do something about health care-single payer is best,
but either Obama's or Hillary's plan rather than
nothing. Then debt relief and fuel prices, although no
miracles are expected here.

Finally there's creating new jobs and new wealth. This
is probably most important strategically, but people
have been spun so many promises, they're cynical, and
Obama was right to point it out. Still he should look
deeper here, and more often.

What gets people's attention are 'high road' programs
like the Apollo Alliance, new 'green' industrial jobs
building the infrastructure of energy independence. All
those wind turbines and wave generators and whatnot
have to be built somewhere, and what blue collar
Pennsylvania, white and Black, knows how to do very
well is build things that create high value and new
wealth.

This is what gets people's attention, not rebates,
handouts and McJobs. Obama's a natural on this subject,
and he'd best spend less ad money on how's he's not in
thrall to lobbyists, and spend more as an advocate of
green industrial policy that would give these mill
towns real hope for change.

[Carl Davidson, a CC-DS member, is a peace and justice
activist, a 'Solidarity Economy' organizer, and
webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama' at
http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com.]

_____________________________________________