“Get me more white people, we need more white people,” is what organizers of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign said as they racially rearranged students for maximum photo diversity at event with Mrs. Obama at Carnegie Mellon.
An Asian girl was told, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though,” according to Andrew Peters, a reporter for Carnegie Mellon’s paper The Tartan.
The organizers’ remarks may be brash, but are truthful. Obama needs white voters in Pennsylvania.
As the April 22 Pennsylvania primary approaches Obama, who is half-black, is trying to make inroads into his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s white, blue-collar base in the Keystone State, where the most coveted demographic are the 3.86 million voting-age white men.
Pennsylvania has long been one of Clinton’s strongholds, but her lead is slipping according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. Quinnipiac now gives 50 percent of Democratic likely voters to Clinton and 44 percent to Obama.
Obama has shortened the gap by aggressively courting the blue-collar base. He’s spending a record-breaking $2.2 million per week to air four new television ads in Pennsylvania and went on what could be called a “blue-collar bus tour” last week.
He’s bowled gutter balls in Altoona, drank Yuengling and eaten hot dogs with Pennsylvania voters. And, he didn’t go to Memphis, Tennessee to commemorate the anniversary of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, like Clinton and GOP presidential candidate John McCain did.
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