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Election 2008 April 17, 2008, 5:00PM EST

The Wal-Mart Sisterhood

(page 2 of 2)

Johnson rarely dines out since the housing crisis slashed her income Bill Cramer/Wonderful Machine

Brouillet balks at both Democrats' health-care plans Armando Bellmas

Lisa Mensinger, 40, a mother of two, worked for years as an aide in day-care centers around Bethlehem. Lately it has gotten harder to find work, and she babysits just a few days a week. After a long layoff from his old job at a paving company, her husband, Larry, took a pay cut in exchange for steady work as a machinist. "There are just no jobs around," Lisa says. She voted for Democrat John Kerry in 2004 and now favors Clinton. Mensinger hopes Hillary can restore the good times of the 1990s. "We had money then. I was middle-class," she says. "Now it seems like there is just rich and poor."

And if Obama ends up as the Democratic nominee? At the moment, Mensinger is not sold and might pick McCain instead. Such skepticism is not surprising. Even before his controversial comments about "bitter" voters in towns left behind, the senator with the electrifying rhetoric struggled to reach the white working-class families pushing those Wal-Mart carts.

HEALTH INSURANCE WOES

In the face of criticism that he offers few specifics on how he would address the economy's woes, Obama is getting down to the nitty-gritty. The rock-star arena speeches have given way to smaller meetings. On Apr. 9 he turned up at Harry S Truman High School in blue-collar Levittown, northeast of Philadelphia, to talk to a crowd of 800 about everything from the price of milk to his planned $4,000 tuition tax credit.

Arlene Riccio, a 60-year-old on disability since she was injured at the chemical plant where she used to work, took two buses to get to the Levittown rally. Having battled cancer and watched two of her four children struggle for adequate health-care coverage, she is concerned mainly with access to affordable insurance. She's heard all the specifics she needs and is backing Obama. "Hillary is so closely linked to Washington," she says, "that I don't think there will be any change."

Valerie Johnson, a 51-year-old paralegal for a real estate title company who lives outside of Allentown, is far less impressed. She has seen her income drop 15% with the collapse of the housing market. She and her boyfriend "rarely go out these days," says Johnson. The tough times have her considering McCain or Clinton. "They have been around, but we just don't know enough about [Obama]," she says.

Still, his remarks about down-on-their-luck voters clinging to guns and religion don't appear to have set him back in Pennsylvania. Before that media firestorm, he had whittled Clinton's roughly 17-point lead from a month ago to around 7 points, according to an average of polls tallied by RealClearPolitics.com. And polls taken after his comments show little difference from those taken just before. But while Obama has made gains among white lower-middle-class women, it hasn't been enough to overcome Clinton's lead among them. "It will be very tough for him to win Pennsylvania without the Wal-Mart voters," says Zogby.

Meantime, McCain has begun to craft a message that, as McInturff says, offers "a believable, credible way of dealing with high prices for gas, health care, and everyday goods and services." On Apr. 10 he threw his support behind plans to help homeowners unable to afford their mortgage payments get cheaper, government-guaranteed loans. Five days later, in a broad-ranging speech, McCain called for a moratorium on federal gasoline taxes between Memorial Day and Labor Day, proposed doubling the tax exemption for dependent children, and urged the government to step in if the credit crisis keeps students from getting college loans this fall.

McCain's challenge, of course, is to hold on to as many of the Wal-Mart Women who voted for Bush as possible. That may be easier in the South, home to the most conservative members of the sisterhood. As she finished shopping at a Wal-Mart on the outskirts of Charlotte, N.C., with two of her four daughters in tow, Jennifer Brouillet, a 36-year-old teacher's aide who voted twice for Bush, says she won't consider either Democrat. She's put off by their plans for universal health care. "I'm afraid we're going to turn into Canada. I don't want to end up in a line, waiting six months to get a procedure," Brouillet says. Besides, she asks: "How are they going to pay for it?"

With Dean Foust in Charlotte, N.C.

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