Obama Abandons the Working Class. An opening for Romney, if he's smart enough.

When President Obama visits Scranton Wednesday, he will speak at the same high school gym where Hillary Clinton kicked off her Pennsylvania campaign in March 2008. We forget it now, but even then Scranton folks were skeptical about the guy promising hope and change.
In that primary, Mr. Obama never did connect. On St. Patrick's Day, he showed up in Scranton wearing no green until someone asked him why and he borrowed a green tie from a staffer. It didn't help that a few weeks before the vote, he explained his inability to gain traction in Pennsylvania by accusing its small-town citizens of being "bitter" and clinging "to guns or religion."


Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, played the homecoming queen. In a speech to an overflow crowd, she spoke about the Scranton Lace Company where her grandfather worked; about the Court Street Methodist Church where she had been baptized; about the slice she'd enjoyed that afternoon at Revello's Pizza-Café.
Mrs. Clinton's message resonated: She won the Pennsylvania primary handily. Most telling was her strength among the non-college-educated white working class, which went for her by as much as three to one. Indeed, though Mr. Obama would go on to win Pennsylvania that November, he would still lose its white working class to Republican John McCain.
There's a message here for Republicans for 2012. Ironically, it may have been outlined best by two Democratic strategists in a publication for the left-leaning Center for American Progress. In "The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election," Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin made headlines for making official what everyone has known unofficially for some time: The Democratic Party is abandoning the white working class.

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Associated Press

Will the president's latest jobs promises play well in Scranton?

The timing may be a little embarrassing, appearing as it does on the eve of Mr. Obama's visit to Scranton. Still, the authors are probably correct. For all of Joe Biden's nostalgia about the blue-collar virtues of his home town (where he hasn't lived since the early days of the Eisenhower administration), the coal mines shut down years ago and many in the white working class have been drifting to the Republican Party.
The authors therefore suggest that Mr. Obama's best demographic bet for 2012 lies in holding white college graduates. They are also up front about the vulnerability. Mostly they phrase it politely—"the perceived inability of the Obama administration's policies to spark real recovery"; "serious doubts about Democratic stewardship of the economy"; or "disenchantment on the economy."
That shouldn't be a hard sell in places like Scranton, where the 9.7% unemployment rate is the worst in the state. When the Obama stimulus came, Lackawanna County spent nearly half of the $39 million it received on education, which means teachers. The city has been deemed "financially distressed" for two decades, and just this month the mayor released a new budget that includes a 29% hike in property taxes.
If these citizens weren't bitter before, they sure have reason to be now. For the white working class, the private sector was what gave them jobs and propelled them into the middle class. Yet whether it's drilling for oil or putting up a shopping mall, today's Democratic Party seems opposed to most of the private-sector jobs that deliver opportunity to those without a college degree.
That's an opportunity for Mitt Romney. In these hard economic times, the former Massachusetts governor could be the first Republican in history to benefit from the prejudice that Republicans are the party of business.
Put it this way. If you are a Democrat or independent who has lost confidence in Mr. Obama, what might you like about Mr. Romney? You might like that he's proved himself successful in business. You might find that especially attractive if you are someone who has lost your job or worry that you might lose your job.
Alas for Mr. Romney, the winning message here will not come by accepting Mr. Obama's class approach to tax relief. The way to win is by drawing distinctions—between states that welcome investment and states that drive it away; between states burdened by a politicized and overcompensated public sector and states that are not; between an approach that divides people by race and class and one that emphasizes upward mobility for all.
Above all, the way to win is by asking Americans whether they want a future for their children that looks like Texas and Indiana—or like Michigan and Illinois?
People in places like Scranton are hungry for more than a 59-point business plan. They need an economic vision rooted in an expanding private sector. Mr. Romney appreciates that his success next November would depend in good part on his ability to attract disaffected Democrats and independents. What he may not know is that this will in turn depend on whether he comes across as a successful businessman, or merely a rich one.