Obama's grass-roots battalion vs. McCain's ragtag platoon

Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen, who won an upset victory in the traditionally Republican 8th District in 2006, expresses confidence that economic self-interest will trump the fear factor: "People can see through the distortions about Obama that will be raised -- whether it's race or whatever else will come next." But, at a point when the McCain campaign has signaled that things are about to get ugly, it may be naive to dismiss Republican efforts to accentuate the negative.

Over breakfast Saturday morning at Hoho's Cafe ("Old Fashioned Goodness") in the Democratic-leaning mill town of Kaukauna, 25-year-old Dan Rademaker offered the textbook, vote-your-wallet argument for Obama: "The reason that I don't care for McCain is that he is for the big companies -- not the little guy." But Rademaker, who is an electronics technician, admitted that he is a rarity among his 20-something friends because he intends to vote. But then, as he carefully drizzled a poached egg onto his toast with the precision of a surgeon prepping for an operation, Rademaker talked about his lone politically interested friend: "He's a liberal. But I don't know how racist he is. And that's a big part of it, though."

The Paper Valley is an area where economic discontent was bubbling to the surface long before the tidal wave hit the financial markets. Over the last decade, roughly one-third of the papermaking jobs in Wisconsin have vanished -- unionized jobs paying $60,000 a year, enough to afford a vacation cottage on a lake and a Harley. But few paper plant shutdowns have caused more shock and distress than this summer's closure of the Kimberly Mill in Kimberly, a town named after one of the founders of Kimberly-Clark and synonymous with papermaking for 120 years. The Kimberly Mill (owned by the NewPage Corp., a subsidiary of Cerberus Capital Management), which made glossy paper stock used in magazines, was a modern, seemingly profitable plant, which was shut down after the International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington ruled that China was not illegally subsidizing below-cost paper imports.

The 600 out-of-work Kimberly employees, most of whom were represented by the Steelworkers, have become a potent political symbol in this corner of the state. "If Obama wins Wisconsin -- and I believe he will win -- it will be largely because of the fight that the millworkers are waging and the attention it gives to unfair trade laws," says Democratic state Rep. Tom Nelson from Kaukauna. That may be hyperbolic, but the Obama campaign has embraced the cause of the Kimberly workers. Andy Nirschl, the local union president, introduced Obama at a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee, and the Democratic nominee pointedly referred to the Kimberly Mill in his opening remarks in Green Bay three weeks later.

At the union hall across the street from the closed Kimberly Mill, Nirschl walked me to the window, pointed to what had been his workplace for 28 years and said, "Take a look at it. Does it look to you like it should be shut up? The No. 6 and No. 7 machines are the fastest in the U.S." Referring to a planned effort next year to reverse the ITC decision, Nirschl said, "If Obama doesn't win, I'll say the mill isn't going to open again. And if Obama wins, I'm pretty optimistic."

The contest in the Paper Valley and the other blue-collar battlegrounds of the Midwest is fast coming down to primal emotions like hope and fear, enthusiasm and apathy. Something major seems to be stirring when the Obama campaign can put a battalion on the streets of Brown County and the McCain forces have to counter with a ragtag platoon of high-school students. (Zach Howard, one of the McCain canvassers, did say with youthful idealism in his voice, "If I can change one vote, it's the same as voting myself.") But fear is a quality that should never be underestimated in politics -- whether it is an ill-defined unease about Obama or the anxiety triggered by the thought of four more years of Republican stewardship of the economy.