Ohio, Florida hold keys to general election victory

WASHINGTON -- The long fixation on race, gender, age and class in the Democratic primaries will soon spread to the general election as the Democratic nominee seeks the keys to the Republican kingdom: Ohio and Florida.

Both states were hotly contested battlegrounds in 2000 and 2004 that gave George W. Bush two terms in the White House. Without them, Republicans lose the presidency.

If Sen. John McCain holds both states for Republicans in November, Democrats must put together 47 offsetting votes in the state-based, winner-take-all Electoral College.

Ohio and Florida are the foundation of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's last-ditch attempt to convince fellow Democrats that her strengths with Latinos, women, seniors and the white working class play best against McCain in roughly 10 swing states.

Sen. Barack Obama's victories in nearly every primary since February have rested on African Americans, upscale whites and young people. He has consistently performed poorly among key populations in Florida -- Latinos, seniors and Jewish voters -- and in Ohio among older women, Catholics and the white working class, what some call the "blue-collar, blue-hair vote."

It was perhaps inevitable that the history-making Democratic candidates would open a race and gender divide by stirring intense group loyalty. But now conservative Democrats are worried.

Sixteen members of Congress from Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri, Florida, Nevada and other swing states wrote in a letter posted on Clinton's Web site Friday that her Pennsylvania victory last month was a "wake-up call."

"Hillary has racked up victories in bellwether states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and now Indiana that are absolutely vital to winning the White House and maintaining our Congressional majority in the fall," they wrote.

"Some demographics are have-to-have, not nice-to-have," said Calif. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a Clinton superdelegate who did not sign the letter.

Some conservative House Democrats privately worry that having Obama at the top of their ticket could damage their own re-election chances.

Obama supporters dismiss Clinton's strength among parts of the Democratic base as a specious extrapolation of primary results. Primaries have nothing to do with a matchup against McCain, they contend.

There is certainly danger in such analogies. Clinton earlier said that winning big states such as California made her the better candidate in November. Obama is just as likely to win solidly Democratic California.

Republican primaries likewise have little to do with general-election prospects. McCain won the New York GOP primary, but has little chance there against a Democrat. He lost Deep South states to Republican rival former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the primaries, but will probably win them in the fall. Experts similarly dismiss Obama's claims that he can put Southern states in play based on his primary victories.

"Reading into what happened in a primary is acceptable, but predicting from that what is going to happen in the future is not," said Gerald Austin, a longtime Ohio political strategist. Older, white female Democrats will be deciding between Obama and McCain, not Obama and Clinton.

A McCain-Obama contest in Ohio, Austin said, "is going to be close."

McCain will have to battle a bad economy. Obama will hope that the youth vote will offset some voters who may dismiss him for racial reasons.

Austin said he has not seen such enthusiasm among young voters since 1968. "If he keeps those young people and adds to them, I think that that makes up for anything he may lose because there are people in states like Ohio who will not vote for anybody who's African American, ever."

In Florida, Clinton is indisputably stronger against McCain, whose campaign would alter its Florida strategy were she the nominee.

A McCain operative said Obama is much weaker among the Florida voting blocs that McCain is targeting, including retirees, veterans and Republican-leaning Cubans. McCain can also count on help from Republican Gov. Charlie Crist. Experts predict Obama would lose Florida.

If Obama loses Ohio, too, "He has to hold Pennsylvania, he has to hold places like Wisconsin, he has to win Virginia, Colorado and Nevada," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

To do that, Obama must win Clinton's base, said former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, now head of the Panetta Institute.

"There is no way a Democrat can win in November if you're not able to bring together not only African Americans but blue-collar workers, Catholics, women, the base vote that has gone to Hillary," Panetta said. "If those divisions remain, Democrats are not going to win in November. It's that simple."

In the end, the wild card may be independent voters.

True independents, excluding weakly affiliated partisans, make up about 15 percent of the electorate. They swing elections.

"They're the ones who tend to respond to the big issues in the end -- war, peace, the economy, the incumbent president," Sabato said. "They may also be susceptible to other factors, including race. ... This is an unprecedented election. We have never had an African American on the ballot for president in a general election."

E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead(at)sfchronicle.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)