Missouri turning
Deciding where to observe campaigning in battleground states isn’t easy these days. At the end of September, Pennsylvania seemed to be swinging, as did Ohio and Colorado. Florida wasn’t. Now Florida is a toss up and all others mentioned seem to be leaning towards Obama or even solidly behind him. So following the polls I decided two weeks ago to go to Missouri, for decades now a pretty solid red state. Senators Obama and McCain made the same choice a couple of days later, so Missouri seems up for grabs.
It would have been impossible to analyze the whole political situation in a state with two big cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, a large rural population, and a very socially conservative southwest, where the Christian right has dominated politics for at least the past decade. Instead, I wanted to find out why, in a pretty affluent area of St. Louis, the churchgoing, traditionally conservative population would even consider turning towards Obama.
The answers I got from former state legislators, activists and neighbors – all of them decade-long conservatives or at least Republican voters - were strikingly similar. All of them felt either pushed to the side or completely out of the GOP by the Christian right and its way of dominating value debates, be it on abortion or stem cell research. They didn’t like Bush and his politics. For those who had still considered voting for McCain earlier in the race, nominating Sarah Palin did the trick.
The way this plays out in everyday life can be humorous. In many front yards I found two signs; one for McCain and one for Obama. The McCain sign often read “Bob says” whereas the Obama sign more often read “Jane says.” In group discussion or at the dinner table, the independent voters stayed fairly quiet, mostly listening to ardent supporters from both sides. In private conversations they often “admitted” to favoring Obama, asking me not to tell their friends and families, because they wouldn’t understand. Or so they thought. I talked to one family in which most members were “secretly” supporting Obama without telling each other. Quite a few of those who decided to vote for Obama – mostly elderly -confided that they still find it strange to vote for an African American.
Out in the field one can sense the difference between the campaigns. McCain has one office in St. Louis, Obama has eight. The energy, the degree of organization, the size of the databases and the number of volunteers in the Obama camp are striking. That Obama’s campaign stop in St. Louis attracted 100,000 people underlines this sense.
I still would not bet on an Obama victory in Missouri. I saw only one piece of a large puzzle, but it amazes me to have come back to St. Louis after 20 years to find that a Democrat, and especially Senator Obama, has a fighting chance there.
Till Knorn is a Transatlantic Fellow at GMF and is here from the office of Hesse’s Minister-President Roland Koch and is observing and analyzing the U.S. election campaign.