When a Wilkes-Barre resident asked Barack Obama about rising gas prices earlier this week, the candidate responded with a story about watching March Madness in a local bar with Sen. Bob Casey.
"We were talking to a guy sitting next to us who was out of work," he told the 1,500 Wilkes-Barre residents gathered in a gymnasium on Tuesday. "And it should be obvious to so many of us, but sometimes you don't think about it. He's out of work. He's having to drive around looking for work. He said it's killing him to try to fill up the gas tank just to get to an interview for a job. You're out of work, you're just burning up money filling up the tank."
The Wilkes-Barre speech was part of Obama's six-day "Road to Change" Pennsylvania bus tour, which stretched from the western Rust Belt region of the state, up to the northeastern coal-mining and post-industrial towns, and south to Philadelphia. At community centers, local bars, and bowling alleys, the candidate set aside much of his soaring rhetoric in favor of pocketbook issues.
The question for months has been whether Barack Obama can appeal to the working-class, white demographic that has been Hillary Clinton's stronghold. It propelled her to victory in Ohio, and has appeared to remain solidly behind her throughout the primary. But with nearly three weeks still to go before Pennsylvanians head to the polls, Obama is taking his campaign directly to these voters -- and fine-tuning his populism in the process. It's a good exercise for a candidate who will need the support of blue-collar, swing voters in the general election.
"Although Wall Street just got the news over the last few months, Main Street has been struggling for a lot longer. Everywhere I go people are working harder and harder just to make ends meet," he told the Wilkes-Barre crowd. A former coal mining town of 43,000 tucked in the northeast corner of the state, Wilkes-Barre has lost most of its industrial base in the past several decades. Clinton's father grew up in the area, and it's viewed as solid Clinton country.
"I've met too many workers who have to compete with their teenage kids for jobs at the local fast-food joint that pay $7, $8 an hour because they lost their pension and their health care," he continued.
"Help us Barack!" shouted a woman in the audience.
On this tour he has spoken in smaller facilities, eschewing the stadiums and arenas he's been known to pack. He talks from a platform raised just slightly above the crowd. He has shortened his speeches and spends twice as much time answering public questions. Signs aren't allowed inside most events, and as one volunteer told people waiting outside of his event in Wilkes-Barre as they grumbled about tossing out their signs, "It's not a rally. It's a town hall format; it's an intellectual dialogue."
In answering questions from the crowd, he often goes into great detail about the specifics of his policy proposals. He discusses his plan to invest $150 billion in creating green jobs and use renewable energies to reduce gas prices, and explains at length how his health-care plan will lower premiums. His speeches are packed with talk about "special interests" and the "voices pushed out" of Washington by lobbyists, oil companies, and financial institutions. He bemoans the rising cost of everything from "a gallon of milk, to a gallon of gasoline," and in both his speeches and his advertisements in the state, he emphasizes that he hasn't taken money from oil companies.
Soaring rhetoric and high-minded idealism haven't been entirely absent in his speeches this week, but they've been significantly downplayed. He seems to have turned his message of hope and idealism to the economic concerns at hand, and he mixes in a healthy does of pragmatism.
"Here's what people don't understand. Being hopeful doesn't mean you're blindly optimistic," he told a crowd in Dunmore, a former mining town of 15,000 that adjoins Scranton. "I know how hard it's going to be."
While his personal story has been a central component of his campaign, on this tour he invokes it when discussing his approach to the current economic situation. After the disappearance of steel mills in Chicago, Obama worked with churches to create programs for those who had lost their jobs. "It was the best education I ever had because it taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things," he said.
For Amanda Webb, a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, and an SEIU member, hearing Obama speak at one of these smaller town hall meetings was what convinced her to back him over Clinton. Webb first saw him speak in Jenkintown on March 18, and came dressed in a purple SEIU T-shirt to see him again in Wilkes-Barre, along with other local SEIU members.
"I was undecided between the two, but he really told me what I wanted to hear," said Webb. "To see him speak, and see he's really like one of us, it really opened my eyes."
Webb said that these smaller events have allowed people in her area to see Obama for themselves and hear his platform first hand, which has helped dispel a lot of the false rumors circulating about the candidate.
"A lot of people are voting because of what somebody else says," said Webb. "They've heard a lot of stuff like 'he doesn't salute the flag,' and there's the race issue."
Ronald Staubly, an Army colonel and physician from Mt. Pocono who served in both Iraq wars, said it was Obama's position on the war and his ability to talk about working-class issues that convinced him to support the candidate.
"Originally I was more of an Edwards backer. I find that Sen. Obama's populism is closely aligned with that of Sen. Edwards," said Staubly, citing Obama's ideas about reforming the financial system and health care and improving social safety nets as evidence of that populism.
In many ways, it's like Iowa all over again, as Obama attempts to cover as much ground in the state as possible in a length of time not granted for most other primaries. Developing his populist rhetoric has not been the most fluid transition for Obama, who's known for talking more like the Harvard Law graduate and professor that he is, and for putting his rhetorical talents on full display. But these toned-down town hall events have given him more intimate contact with more Pennsylvania voters, presenting an opportunity for him to close the gap with Clinton. Some of the most recent polls show him closing in, down by just 5 percentage points. Even if he doesn't win over enough voters here to claim victory in the primary, the drawn out campaign has given Pennsylvanians a chance to see him for themselves -- and given the candidate an opportunity to shape and practice his populism.
