Contractor Clinton vs. Architect Obama (To Win the Working Class, Obama Must Speak Their Language)

Earlier in the campaign, I used an analogy to illustrate the difference between Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama each see a car for the very first time. Hillary opens the hood and asks “how does it work?” Barack gets in the driver’s seat and muses “where can we go with it?”

The analogy was meant to describe their divergent approaches to government: Hillary the policy wonk vs. Barack the big-picture reformer. But as Senator Obama struggles to wrest the fiercely loyal blue collar vote from Senator Clinton, the analogy takes on new meaning.

Beyond the Clichés
For all the clichés of identity politics – the racial divide, the generation gap, the culture wars – the pundits have missed a more fundamental distinction. Call it forest/trees, process/product or left brain/right brain – these are the true differences between the two candidates, and they’re reflected to a T by their supporters.

Demographers are fond of pointing out that Obama is a hit with college-educated populations, while Clinton retains her base of union workers (despite Obama’s near-monopoly on union endorsements) – and the quick translation into economic terms seems like a no-brainer. But “Bittergate” notwithstanding, the causal relationship has been overstated: people don’t support Obama because they’re rich and no one pulls the lever for Hillary simply because they're poor.

There is no logical, policy-based reason for “down-market” Democrats to prefer Sen. Clinton to Obama any more than there is for gun owners to. Hillary’s personal narrative contains little class struggle and her policies are certainly no friendlier to the working man. (In fact, Hillary’s reticence to move the cap on Social Security tax suggests more sympathy for the upper middle class.) The difference between the two lies in how they draw their conclusions and, more importantly, communicate them to voters. Some people respond viscerally to broad calls for sweeping change. Others demand specific, concrete, policy-oriented solutions: what does it mean for me?

While the blue collar/white collar distinction provides a convenient shorthand, it rings true in a manner that goes well beyond income level. By and large, blue collar jobs are tactical jobs. They’re focused on the individual elements that make up a whole: building, assembling, diagnosing, repairing. People who devote their lives to these pursuits are tactical thinkers, they break a mission down to its inherent steps and proceed incrementally.

Architects vs. Contractors
Nowhere is this distinction more apparent than in the construction industry. Architects, famous for their lofty plans drawn up in air-conditioned offices, face a disconnect when trying to communicate with contractors. Unless the architect comes to the table armed with a comprehensive understanding of materials, man-hours and job specs, the architect and contractor quickly arrive at an impasse. The artist’s rendering may be beautiful, but without a sound tactical plan, it’s meaningless.

Similarly, Barack Obama’s rendering of a new American architecture sounds gorgeous, but until it’s translated into a concrete roadmap of steps that directly affect Americans it’s, well, just words. Taking on special interests sounds nice, but how does that fill our tanks with gas? Sure, we’re in favor of bringing our country together, but we also want to bring our kids to college.

So, while Obama shows off his working-class bona fides by recounting his days organizing steel workers or reliving his modest single-parent upbringing, he misses a golden opportunity. These voters aren’t interested in whether he is rich or poor (voters tend to assume candidates are rich, regardless); they may not even want to know whether he can relate to their problems. All they want to know is how he will solve them. He’s already won over the architects, now it’s time to work on the contractors.