OBAMA - THE POLITICAL LEDGER - AT 11:24 A.M. ET:  Ron Brownstein, in National Journal, has a solid piece sizing up Obama's political position, a year before midterm elections:

As 2010 approaches, President Obama is displaying a familiar strength, a familiar weakness, and a new vulnerability that could tip next year's midterm election.

The familiar strength is his standing among racial minorities. In the 2008 race, Obama won four-fifths of nonwhite voters. Nearly three-fourths of nonwhites still approve of his performance, the latest Gallup weekly polling average shows...

...This takes us to Obama's familiar weakness: his difficulties among white voters without college educations. He's not the first Democrat with that problem. Although such working-class whites anchored Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition, no Democratic presidential nominee since 1988 has carried more than 44 percent of them, according to exit polls; Obama captured a meager 40 percent.

One problem Obama has with working-class whites, Brownstein says, is that he has an intellectual, rather than a personal, problem-solving manner.  But there are other issues:

The president's difficulties extend beyond manner. Polls show most working-class whites doubt that his flotilla of federal initiatives will help them. In a recent survey by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, only one-third of noncollege whites said that their families would be better off if health care reform passes. ...

The bottom line:

Like all downturns, this recession has hit hardest at the most economically vulnerable, particularly racial minorities. But this storm has been unusually egalitarian, battering those at the top too. Since 2007, median incomes have plunged more for white families headed by men with a college degree than those headed by men with only high school educations, the Economic Policy Institute reports.

That widening distress changes the political equation. A possible Republican surge next year in blue-collar "beer track" districts remains the biggest threat to the Democrats' House majority. The Democrats' vulnerability will deepen, however, if they cannot hold the line in "wine track" districts whose education levels exceed the national average. That's one way a difficult 2010 election for Democrats could turn catastrophic.

COMMENT:  There's been a remarkable role reversal in American politics.  At one time Republicans wrote off "beer track" districts and Democrats wrote off "wine track" districts.  Now the situation is flipped.  Those of us brought up in the liberal politics of the 40s and 50s never thought we'd see the day when the GOP could seriously claim that it was the "party of the people."

Democrats, to win, might have to introduce themselves to working people again.

December 12, 2009