How Barack Obama Can Reach the Working Class: Start Smoking Again
As the Democratic primaries revealed, Barack Obama
is having a hard time winning the support of
blue-collar voters. So here’s a piece of strategic advice
for the candidate: Lose the Nicorette
Light up instead. Start acting like a prole
Smoking help Obama's image. I suspect the discomfort some Americans feel about him has less to do with race than style.He can seem aloof, over-groomed and fussy about eating the right foods and getting enough exercise.
Bumming a smoke on the rope line, soiling the sleeve of his pristine suit with cigarette ash and interrupting the flow of his soaring oratory with a smoker’s hack would go a long way toward dispelling his effete image.
It would also help his wife, Michelle, who made him quit smoking at the start of the campaign. She’s going through a rough patch right now as Republicans try to paint her as un-American.
If her husband backslides and starts smoking again, Mrs. Obama could assume a more familiar role: beleaguered and betrayed spouse who can’t reform her wayward, weak-willed husband.
A Pack-a-Day Man [Source]
As the Democratic primaries revealed, Barack Obama is having a hard time winning the support of blue-collar voters.
So here’s a piece of strategic advice for the candidate: Lose the Nicorette. Light up instead.
Consider these statistics, culled from studies of smoking patterns. Americans who make between $24,000 and $36,000 a year smoke at twice the rate of those earning $90,000 or more.
The same applies to Americans with a high-school education rather than a college degree. Rural Americans smoke more than city-dwellers.
As for race, there’s a close correlation between states with high rates of white smokers and those where Mr. Obama polled worst in the primaries.
Leading the pack of smoking states are Kentucky and West Virginia; industrial states like Ohio aren’t far behind.
Bottom line: small-towners in the Rust Belt and Appalachia don’t cling to guns and religion so much as they do cigarettes.
By rejoining them, Mr. Obama would also touch voters in several heavy-smoking swing states: Michigan, Missouri and Nevada. Added bonus — Virginia and North Carolina, two leading tobacco-producing states, are both in play this election.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I’m an Obama supporter and fellow Nicorette chewer.
Thanks to the gum, I no longer crave cigarettes. But I do miss the companionship of a shared smoke.
Indulging in a vice stigmatized by most Americans is an easy way to bond with people with whom you otherwise have nothing in common.
This aspect of smoking would be of help to Mr. Obama, too. I suspect the discomfort some Americans feel about him has less to do with race than style.
He can seem aloof, over-groomed and fussy about eating the right foods and getting enough exercise.
Bumming a smoke on the rope line, soiling the sleeve of his pristine suit with cigarette ash and interrupting the flow of his soaring oratory with a smoker’s hack would go a long way toward dispelling his effete image.
It would also help his wife, Michelle, who made him quit smoking at the start of the campaign. She’s going through a rough patch right now as Republicans try to paint her as un-American.
If her husband backslides and starts smoking again, Mrs. Obama could assume a more familiar role: beleaguered and betrayed spouse who can’t reform her wayward, weak-willed husband.
The Obama campaign could also spin his smoking as a belt-tightening measure in tough economic times. Nicorette gum costs about 50 cents a piece, roughly twice the price of a cigarette, depending what state you’re in.
Smoking can even be cast as a patriotic act, akin to a flag pin. Tobacco goes deeper in our history than any other crop.
Native Americans harvested it for centuries before Europeans arrived, and cultivation of tobacco ensured the survival and prosperity of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony on this continent.
Without the weed, Jamestown might well have failed, leaving this land to be settled by wicked Spanish or perfidious French.
Of course, Mr. Obama can’t smoke just any cigarette. Like everything in a campaign, his choice requires stagecraft. Clearly, a Dunhill or (quelle horreur!) a Gaulois would be disastrous.
American Spirit has the right ring but the wrong demographic: young hipsters. Nor should the candidate bum Newports or Kools, brands traditionally favored by African-Americans.
To capture voters in coal country and smokestack towns, he needs an old-fashioned coffin nail. Unfiltered Camels come to mind, except Joe Camel has been tarred as a come-on to children.
Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch — a slogan better suited to bruised Clinton supporters. And Marlboro, reported to be Mr. Obama’s brand before he quit, evokes the wide open spaces and low-electoral-vote country of Montana or Wyoming.
So my choice would be Winston, which was the longtime sponsor of Nascar. Or, perhaps, Mr. Obama could take up smokeless tobacco. I’m sure the campaign can poll this kind of thing.
As for voters who might object, the highest rates of nonsmokers live in solidly red states like Utah, or in safely Democratic ones like Massachusetts, where I sit at this moment working my Nicorette. I can’t kick the gum, but, Mr. Obama, yes you can.