The Race to Get It “Right” in Indiana
Posted by Vriz on April 28th, 2008
The race in Indiana is definitely on. Over the weekend both Democratic candidates and their surrogates criss-crossed the state. Indiana would be a prized win for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton: a recent national Gallop tracking poll suggests that the Democratic Presidential candidates are in dead heat.
Barack Obama has fine-tuned his communication with working-class voters in Indiana, a demographic he has yet to win over. The candidate spoke in Anderson, Indiana over the weekend. It’s a community of 131, 312 people, hard-hit by the closure of the Delphi autoparts manufacturing plant last year. Between 2006 and 2007, the number of people that left Anderson cancelled out the natural population increase in the community for that year. The unemployment rate in February of 2008 was 6.8%, compared to 5.2% in Indiana, and 4.8% nationally.
What can the future President do for communities like Anderson across the nation? Well, certainly doing nothing is not the answer. Sen. Obama was right on target when he emphasized that plant closures like Delphi do not just affect the laid-off workers, “the whole community takes a blow.” He spoke about giving tax breaks to companies that invest “right here in Anderson, ” and of his plans to renegotiate NAFTA, to include stricter labor provisions, because “we can’t compete against forced labor or child labor.”
