I’m completely sick of the conventional wisdom that Barack Obama somehow has a problem with “hard-working white Americans.” He didn’t have this problem in Oregon, let alone the other mostly-white states where he’s won. Instead, as Josh Marshall notes, he doesn’t do well with white voters from Appalachia—relatively small potatoes in the general election—but an “Appalachian problem” doesn’t have the same sense of urgency as what the media & the Clinton campaign have construed.
By the way, I’m white. (But I often wonder about the “hard-working” part.)