It Seems That Unions Members Are Not In the Obama Camp. Democrats Claim Racism.

Salena Zito in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review writes about the appeal that John McCain has for union members. Without union support, Republicans would carry states with lots of working-class people line Pennsylvanian and Ohio by wide margins.

So Democrats know that they have a problem...with Democrats.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- You just knew that when Joe O'Connell, former head of the local AFL-CIO, got on stage here with John McCain and Sarah Palin things were not going smoothly for the Obama campaign among union voters.

"I am a lifelong Democrat, an intelligent Democrat, who is supporting John McCain," O'Connell said last week as a crowd of 7,000 waved "Another Democrat for John McCain" signs and roared its approval.

To what do pundits attribute this attraction to McCain? RACISM.

[Bill George, Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President] ... narrows the problem down to race. "There is no question, earlier in the primary campaign the racial issue was there, just like the gender issue was with Hillary for some unions," he says.

Just so there's no mistake, George is calling the union members he heads racists.

College professors agree:

Frank Stricker, a history professor at California State University and a union expert, says race is a key to what alienates segments of the labor movement, especially in Ohio and west of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania.

Larry Sabato, who shed his non-partisan credentials when he called George Allen a racist piles on:

University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato is blunter: "There's no question that race is at the heart of Obama's problem with blue-collar white union members. You'd have to be pretty naive to think otherwise."

Glenn Reynolds opines:

I had no idea that racism was so rampant within the Democratic Party.

Heh!