The voters of Levittown, Pennsylvania: The Transformation

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The Transformation
By MICHAEL SOKOLOVE
Published: November 8, 2008

....Political pollsters track trends and changes within big blocs of voters. What they do less well is catch the complicated, ever-evolving and often conflicted feelings within individual voters.

Levittown had been Hillary country all the way — it gave Mrs. Clinton roughly three out of every four of its votes in the Pennsylvania primary in May. In doing so, it conformed, in some ways, to its history and stereotype. William Levitt built the vast postwar development in the shadow of a giant United States Steel plant, some 17,000 homes sprawling across three Pennsylvania townships and one borough. He would not sell to black families.

According to the latest United States census, just 2 percent of Levittown’s current 54,000 residents are African-American; about an equal percent are Hispanic. The community is overwhelmingly Democratic, but filled with older whites who did not attend college — the so-called Reagan Democrats who in recent presidential elections have been the voters most likely to swing between parties.

I grew up in Levittown, and in the spring had returned there before the Democratic primary to write about how Mr. Obama’s message of hope and change was connecting with its blue-collar population. It wasn’t. My article in The New York Times Magazine reported that his words were coming across as lofty and abstract to people more attuned to concrete concerns like the hourly wage and the monthly car payment. The article was published on the morning before Mr. Obama made his one big gaffe of the campaign, telling attendees at a San Francisco fund-raiser that some blue-collar voters have been so beaten down that “it’s not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion.”...

I traveled again to Levittown on Election Day to see how people would vote and how they would respond to what looked like an imminent Obama victory. The contrast from the spring — and, in fact, this new vision of Levittown compared with what I had known in my childhood — was almost breathtaking.

“Obama,” said the ironworker, when I asked how he’d be voting.

“Obama,” said the plumber.

“Obama,” said the chef.

And on and on. Military moms. Vietnam veterans. Abortion opponents. College students and retirees. Bank tellers, pipe fitters, officer workers, machinists, meat cutters, boilermakers and carpenters....

Mr. McCain’s message, to the extent it was received at all, irritated them. The Democrats of Levittown did not defect — they stayed in the fold, and then some....

***

Before Mr. Obama emerged on the national scene and began winning primaries, few people would have predicted Americans were on the verge of elevating a person of African descent to the highest office in the land, or that they would have to confront any reluctance they might have about accepting black leadership. The nation was transformed on Tuesday, but what had to occur first was the transformation of individual voters.

A lot of people in Levittown needed the five months between the primary election and Tuesday to get used to a new idea. After Mrs. Clinton’s defeat, followed by a financial crisis that shook Americans to the core, they came to terms. If Mr. Obama’s race had been a factor, they eventually had to weigh it against other concerns....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/weekinreview/09sokolove.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all