BARACK OBAMA'S TALL ORDER

WINNING WORKING CLASS DEMS AND NEW VOTERS ON THE PATH TO THE WHITE HOUSE By Alan S. Chartock Sen. Barack Obama's pick of Sen. Joseph Biden to be his running mate is probably the best thing he could have done. Despite the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton might have helped him unite the Democratic Party and win in November, it was clear that there was bad blood between the two. In his choice of Biden, Obama has proven that he is presidential enough to pick someone who will help him govern and not just help him win. The American people should want a problem solver. We have had enough of the same old politics of playing to the political base. Obama is now dead even and maybe even a bit behind Sen. John McCain. He has to prove to all the American people that he has the stuff to govern-to get us out of the mess in Iraq, fix the economy, keep people in their homes, heat their homes, heal racial divisions, heal international divisions and bring respect to this country from the rest of the world. Considering the mess that Republican George W. Bush has left this country in, it would stand to reason that Obama would eat McCain's lunch. It isn't working that way. From the very beginning, it has been clear that the vestiges of racism have affected the way the body politic thinks about Obama. The blue-collar, working-class Democrats have never been convinced that Obama is for everyone. It's just that simple. If Obama cannot find a strategy to fix his working-class dilemma, he will not win the election. He has to find a way to convince people that he will be as tough on crime as anyone and that he will work for the middle-class voters and protect their jobs and keep them safe. He needs to do for the rest of the country what he did in Illinois. That brings us to New York State, where Democrats outnumber Republicans and the Republicans hold the state by two tenuous votes. Obama did not carry New York-he lost it to favorite daughter Hillary Clinton. Clinton had proven she had the right stuff to go upstate and change enough Republicans to Democrats to swamp her opponents. She did that with the help of some very suspicious characters like Rupert Murdoch. I believe that what killed Clinton (albeit narrowly) in her pursuit of the presidency was that too many Americans believed she was from the class of politicians who played by the numbers. She voted for the war because she believed it was the smart political thing to do. She surrounded herself with the same-old same-olds, like Harold Ickes and Howard Wolfson, who played the game as if it were a professional sport. She showed no soul, no real hope, nothing to set herself apart from the crowd of professional politicians who created a huge sense of cynicism among American voters. Along came Obama, who offered that very hope, and he won just enough states and delegates to grab the nomination. If the people who historically don't vote in large enough numbers- African Americans, Hispanics, the poor and the young-defy the odds offered by the pollsters and come out and vote in large enough numbers, Obama could do it. That's why the Obama people sent text messages on his VP pick to the young people who got him this far. He was saying, "Thanks for getting me to point. Now take me over the finish line." If they do vote (and send him enough money), he has a shot. This could be one of those realigning elections when things really change. As for Obama, he has to do everything in his power to reassure blue-collar voters that he will work for them. If he succeeds, he'll get enough votes. Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.