People Drink the Obama Kool-Aid, but Obama Zinfandel?

By Margaret Lyons in News on Sep 25, 2007 5:02PM

Yesterday's Trib had a big article about Barack Obama's ability to appeal to "beer-track voters," and today Media Matters posts a smack down, saying the Trib could just have easily focused on different anecdotes that support the opposite point. Is this a typical conservative paper vs. liberal blog fracas? Well ... maybe. But it's fun anyway! Beer, wine, poker, Obama — sounds like a party.

The story sets up the difference between "beer-track" and "wine-track" voters — the former are less educated and poorer, the latter better educated and richer. According to the Trib, Obama has "done well attracting the Chardonnay crowd, but he has had less success winning over Joe Sixpack;" Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is doing A-OK with Mr. Sixpacks. The Obama camp says this has more to do with fame than anything else, but the Trib says it's because he's too "professorial." The Trib notes that "it was white zinfandel with an Obama logo on the bottle that was for sale at a rally one recent evening," not beer. MM says there was a fund-raiser this summer that included beer with the big O's face on it. (Neither story mentions that back in 2004, Kenya nicknamed their Senator-brand beer "Obama.")