Wall Street Journal : Obama Aims to Keep White Voters on Board : His Midwest Bus Trip in rural Minnesota and Iowa, Obama tailors message to the Young and Working-Class - The Midwest is dangerous for Obama 2012, it needs attention

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Being President of the USA is very political, it requires communication and listening to the constituencies.

Wall Street Journal
Obama Aims to Keep White Voters on Board
As Groups Who Backed President in 2008 Drift to GOP, Midwest Bus Trip Tailors Message to the Young and Working-Class
By LAURA MECKLER And CAROL E. LEE


Obama Aims to Keep White Voters on Board


Some excerpts :

White working-class voters rarely favor Democrats, and Mr. Obama lost this group by 18 percentage points in 2008. But the Republican advantage widened to 30 points in 2010. Mr. Obama will need to narrow that gap to win re-election.

Other segments of the white vote are also moving to the GOP, according to the surveys by the Pew Research Center, including young whites, those with less than a high-school education and voters earning less than $30,000. The latter group favored Democrats by 15 points in 2008; they now back the GOP by four points.

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Mr. Obama's political advisers say the president's challenge is to convince voters his economic policies are better for them than those of his GOP opponents. "The Republican candidates have now had three debates, and with tens of thousands of words exchanged in those debates they didn't mention the middle class a single time," said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.

Peosta's Democratic Mayor Dick Avenarius, whose town hosted the president for a rural economic forum Tuesday, voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 but is undecided for 2012. "I just want to see who the other options are," he said. "The most important issue is jobs."

Mr. Obama's central message is shaping up to be as much about politics as policy. Republicans are blocking action, he said, urging voters to transfer their anger from him to the GOP.

"My attitude is, get it done," the president said at a town hall meeting Monday evening in Decorah, Iowa. "And if they don't get it done, then we'll be running against a Congress that's not doing anything for the American people, and the choice will be very stark."

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On Tuesday, Mr. Obama announced efforts to boost small-business lending in rural areas. And his administration said it would spend up to $510 million to subsidize the production of biofuels not made from corn.

Dan Neenan, who runs an agriculture-safety program at Northeast Iowa Community College, voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 but now blames both parties for inaction. He said he is weighing his options for 2012.

The economy in this part of the country is stronger than many other places, with unemployment at 6% in Iowa and 6.7% in Minnesota, compared with 9.1% nationally. Nonetheless, said Nikki Brevig, the executive director of the Decorah Area Chamber of Commerce, local businesses are anxious over what future federal policies will be adopted.

A registered independent, she voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 but is now unsure about 2012. "At this point I'm still waiting for all of the options," she said.

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