Obama himself offers other evidence that he can sell himself in working-class and rural areas, often pointing to his strong showing in southern Illinois in his lopsided 2004 Senate victory.
Still, during his first major Iowa farm visit earlier this summer, he made it clear that he sometimes forgets he is not in his intellectually and financially affluent section of Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood.
On the farm that day, while trying to make a sympathetic point that farmers have not seen an increase in prices from their crops, Obama posed the following question:
“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” he asked. “I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff.”
That comment came despite the fact that Iowa does not have any Whole Foods stores, nor do its farmers typically grow the leafy green.
Hard-working anecdote
The need for Obama to appear more working-class is perhaps reflected in the periodic inclusion in his stump speech of a recent experience helping a union health-care worker as part of the Service Employees International Union's “Walk a Day in My Shoes” program for candidates.
“I went with her to work that day, and we made his bed and helped him get dressed, and we scrubbed the floors and made him breakfast and cleaned the house and did the laundry,” Obama recently told an audience. “I have to say, it was one of the best days I have had on the campaign so far.”
Still, after a hard day's work, Obama seems to prefer wine to beer. In another section of his stump speech, he recalls a recent decision to visit a remote South Carolina town with relatively few voters to woo a state legislator's endorsement.
“I must have had a glass of wine or something because I said 'fine, no problem,'” he says in one of the anecdote's laugh-lines.
It should not be suggested that Obama is without blue-collar support. A speech he gave last week to the Service Employees International Union, for example, won strong reviews.
Still, it was white zinfandel with an Obama logo on the bottle that was for sale at a rally one recent evening in Dubuque, Iowa, where a local winery had offered them as a campaign fundraiser.
The adjoining building was a former brewery, but there was no Obama beer for sale that night.