Clinton beat Obama by appealing to the white working class men and women who usually vote against their best economic interests because some politician has come to town and told them a lesbian couple is moving in next door to threaten their marriage.  That didn't happen this time.

These working class men and women are no different than the folks in upstate New York who Senator Clinton courted in her first campaign for the Senate and whom she has not let down over her time as a Senator.  Clinton has developed excellent relationships with rural New Yorkers, visits there often, brings them a significant amount of pork, and spends time with local and state officials trying to develop economic incentives that would bring jobs (not more prisons) to towns hit hard by job losses.  She is quite comfortable having a shot and a beer with the boys in Essex County who work as prison guards while talking about guns and war.  And she is equally comfortable in New Square and Harlem and Washington Heights and  on the Upper East Side side talking about what matters in those places.

Clinton appeals to a large demographic in New York and hoped to bring them along with her in this campaign.  She did not anticipate Barack Obama and the fact that he would pull away her African American support while developing a demographic -- young people -- that she hasn't cultivated in New York because she didn't need them to win.   I won't go into the other things that have hurt her in this campaign.  Somebody will write the definitive book on that in no time.

But these working class voters were lost to the Democratic Party a long time ago and Clinton recaptured in New York and for a point in time in Pennsylvania.  She will work that same crowd in Indiana and  win them based on issues that affect them day in and day out.  She deserves credit for that.  The Democratic Party needs these folks back.  If they view Barack Obama as an elitist who cannot understand their issues (although I think he surely does) they will do it again -- vote Republican and against their best interests.  

Obama and his supporters note that he was a community organizer in Chicago.  There he honed his abililty to see all sides of an issue, build bridges and get things done for the people.  Lost is the fact that Hillary Clinton organized communities in upstate New York, built bridges between competing interests and gets things done for a group of people who were highly suspicious of her in the beginning of her "Listening Tour."  Any competent Congressperson or Senator is a good community organizer and has local offices staffed with people who can respond to constituent needs promply, respectfully, and smartly.   Clinton does.

In rural New Mexico the state GOP is running an ad condemning Obama's remarks that rural Pennsylvanian's are "bitter."  The ad can be heard on my blog.  That ad is a precursor to defining Obama as an outsider and an elitist.

Obama has significantly enlarged the base of the Democratic Party with hundreds of thousands of new registered voters.  But he needs to feel comfortable enough in his skin rather than his head and reach out to white working class men and women in a genuine manner that takes them where they are at.  If Obama loses this group they are McCain's for the picking.  Superdelegates know that.