Hillary's bridge back to the 20th century

For a lot of Clinton voters here, those details don't matter so much as the big picture she's painting them. It's a familiar one. She's aiming for people like Bunda, who want a change from George W. Bush, but would prefer a change back to something they've already tried. Clinton offers soothing policy prescriptions -- $100 billion in middle-class tax cuts, 5 million new industrial jobs keyed to "green" technology so they're allegedly outsourcing-proof. And she offers protectionist rhetoric to go along with it, attacking China for dumping steel on U.S. markets and shipping poisoned food to U.S. pets. (This is a little more airbrushing; the Clinton administration renewed China's preferred trading status every year when it came up for review.) Clinton wants to make it easier to borrow money for college, as it was in the good old days, and she wants to make it cheaper to buy gas, as it was in the good old days. Everything seems geared toward reminding supporters how well they used to have it.

And with her crowds, it works. Why try the other guy when you can just have the '90s again? "People don't understand a lot of the issues," said Marjorie Margolies, who lost her suburban Philly House seat in 1994 after she cast the deciding vote for Bill Clinton's first budget proposal. Now she's a supporter (and possibly future in-law) of Hillary Clinton and teaches a class on politics at the University of Pennsylvania's Fels Center of Government. "They really do vote on what makes them feel good, what's more believable, who has a more pleasing personality." For Clinton's supporters, the nostalgia helps do the trick.

"I couldn't trust Obama to lead the country, not with Iraq, Iran and all that bullshit we got," said Jerry Cullen, a crane operator from Fishtown, one of Philadelphia's working-class neighborhoods near the Delaware River, with demographics made for Clinton (white, older, Catholic). "She's a doer." For Cullen and his wife, Mary, healthcare and the economy are even bigger worries than foreign policy. "We have some serious issues, and it scares me that these young people aren't really looking at that," Mary Cullen said. "They're just seeing him as this young fresh face. He's got charisma, but I want more than that." Clinton's most dedicated supporters want someone who will fight for them, and they're not sure Obama will. "He ain't got the clout to do it, and he don't got the hours," Jerry Cullen said. "That woman got 30 hours in her day. Ain't nobody works 30 hours in a day but that kid."

Hence the "Rocky" music everywhere she goes. The Hillary-as-Rocky theme speaks directly to that sentiment. "When it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common," she told the labor convention. "I never quit. I never give up." But there is a downside to casting yourself as the blue-collar heroine who battles on against the odds. "Rocky" isn't just a classic tale of a scrappy underdog; it's also now considered the quintessential cinematic expression of the working-class white backlash against the civil rights upheavals of the '60s and '70s. In grasping a cherished local symbol, Clinton may not have thought through the complicated racial politics involved in the film, but they're mirrored, at some level, in the campaign. After hearing from both candidates at the AFL-CIO convention, some union members from northeastern Pennsylvania told me matter-of-factly that they have friends and neighbors who won't vote for Obama because he's black.

"I don't think people are racist. I just think they're scared," said Antoinette Yachta, a steelworker from Throop, Pa., near Scranton. She isn't sure who she'll vote for in the primary, though she's leaning toward Obama, and she might still vote for John McCain in November. (In 2004, she volunteered for John Kerry's campaign, then voted for Bush.) "They don't think it's time yet, for even a woman president, but if they had a choice, they'd pick her." It could be that part of what makes Clinton the comfortable, safe choice for some of her voters goes beyond the economy and into touchier areas.

That's not Clinton's fault, and her intense focus on the economy is clearly her main argument to her base here, not any kind of subconscious racial point. But in the end, that isn't even the biggest metaphorical problem that "Rocky" presents for Clinton. By the time McCain supporter Sylvester Stallone had finished making the fourth film in the "Rocky" series in 1985, the all-American working-class boxer had become a rich and famous success who defended U.S. pride against a Soviet automaton. Before Clinton puts too much stock in her analogy, though, she might want to go back and watch the end of the first movie -- where Rocky Balboa wins a moral victory and the love of the crowd but loses, on a decision, to a black opponent.