How Obama won Wisconsin

The Illinois senator did well with campus liberals, white men, crossover Republicans and independents, but he made inroads into Clinton's working-class base too.

By Edward McClelland

Read more: Democratic Party, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Politics, Russ Feingold, News, Barack Obama, 2008 election

REUTERS/Tim Johnson

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama greets supporters Feb. 19 in Houston.

Feb. 20, 2008 | MADISON, Wis. -- It was only a few minutes after 8 p.m. when the Great Dane, a brew pub within sight of the state capitol's illuminated eggshell dome, learned that Barack Obama was leading in Wisconsin. Soon after that, the networks called the state for Obama, and Gov. Jim Doyle mounted the stage to address his Wisconsin victory party. Obama was still speaking in Houston, but the bartenders turned the sound off, and Doyle stepped to the microphone.

"We in Wisconsin have changed the course of history," he said. "We are the state that decided who the Democratic nominee will be and who the next president of the United States will be."

Doyle was backdropped by University of Wisconsin students sporting red "Badgers for Obama" T-shirts, all bearing the candidate's face. At his side was Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, who triumphantly declared that Obama had carried the campus 10-to-1. Everyone had expected Obama to run up the score at the famously liberal school, but as the results rolled in, it became clear that Obama had won counties all across the state, from Lake Michigan to Lake Superior.

He did so by mobilizing young people -- first-time voters were up 17 percent over the 2004 primary, according to exit polls provided by the campaign -- and by cutting into Hillary Clinton's expected base of blue-collar workers. Obama won half of union voters, campaign officials said. (Exit polls had Obama winning union households 53 to 44 percent.)

That bodes well for Obama's prospects in some other upcoming primary states, said state Sen. Bob Jauch, an Obama supporter who represents a North Woods district.

"Ohio and Pennsylvania, you begin to say, there's something in there that's similar to Wisconsin," Jauch said.

If any state was designed for a showdown between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, it was Wisconsin.

Barack Obama's base and Hillary Clinton's base live side by side here. At least among white voters, Wisconsin mirrors the divisions in the Democratic Party that have made this primary campaign a deadlock. On the one hand, this is the cradle of the progressive movement. (One of its innovations: the first presidential primary, held in 1912.) It's also a state with a long tradition of environmentalism. One of America's greatest conservation books, "A Sand County Almanac," was written by Aldo Leopold, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Wisconsin believes in public education -- more than 90 percent of its residents have high school degrees -- and public radio -- Madison's WHA is the oldest station in the United States. The Badger State's progressives are proud of their liberal traditions, see them as a model for the rest of the nation, and have been waiting all their lives for someone like Obama. (Their own senator, Russ Feingold, passed on a race for president this year.)

Hillary Clinton went after the voters who won't be found reading the Progressive, which was founded by Sen. Robert La Follette, or eating in Indian restaurants in downtown Madison. They're the snowmobilers, bowlers, deer hunters and Packer fans who give the state its ethnic flavor and distinctive foodways -- German beer, Danish kringle, Icelandic fish boil. They live in industrial towns like La Crosse and Racine, or gray ports like Green Bay and Ashland. Their economic struggles are the reason Wisconsin's per capita income is lower than the nation's at large. Having watched dozens of factories leave the state, they were a target audience for Clinton's message that "if you don't have a strong manufacturing base, you can't be a strong country."

Wisconsin was significant because the state had the week to itself. It was the first state in which the finalists went one on one, without another contest to divide their attention (Obama had a lock on his native Hawaii). Obama, however, spent much more time here. Obama started his campaign on home turf -- the 17,000-seat Kohl Center in Madison. He filled it to capacity, a feat that is already becoming part of Wisconsin political lore.

"This is our moment," he told his usual gang of well-educated liberals. "This is our time, and where better to affirm our ideals than Wisconsin, where a century ago the Progressive movement was born?"

But Obama's next move was to a General Motors plant in Janesville, where workers have been offered a buyout to make way for lower-paid labor. Obama promised a middle-class tax cut, a $4,000 tuition tax credit, and environmental and labor provisions in trade agreements. He chased that by pledging billions of dollars to develop renewable fuels and rebuild roads and bridges.

Throughout the weekend, Clinton vacillated between defeatism and aggressiveness. She didn't show up in Wisconsin until Saturday and planned to be gone by Sunday supper. Clinton's aides played down their candidate's chances -- she was concentrating on the bigger prizes of Ohio and Texas.

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