What we know

Barack Obama doesn't do well in Appalachia.

Of course, neither did Ned Beatty*.

But nonetheless, that doesn't mean, unless the theme many pundits with the help of the Clinton campaign want to put forth, that he cannot win the white working class.

Actually both candidates do much better for Democrats than usual...that's right both of them:

But primaries only tell us so much about general elections. In our latest ABC/Post poll, testing each of the Democrats against John McCain, there’s a shortfall among less-educated whites for both: McCain leads Obama by 12 points in this group, Clinton by 8.

Obama, with his upscale appeal, does better among better-educated whites: McCain’s just +3 vs. Obama, compared with McCain’s 12-point advantage against Clinton among college-educated whites.

So Clinton does slightly better among non-college educated whites, but both lose to McCain at this moment.

However, the important thing is to compare how they are doing to the last two Democratic nominees, one who actually won the popular vote and the other who barely lost in a much more positive environment for the GOP:

It’s fair for the Obama camp to point out that he doesn’t do significantly worse against McCain among working-class whites than Clinton does, and that he does better with their upscale counterparts. And Obama’s numbers are nothing like John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s; they lost working-class whites to George W. Bush by 24 points and 17 points, respectively.

And in either case, Obama's race and Clinton's age remain less problematic for them than the fact the McCain is old.

As we noted in our poll analysis yesterday, 17 percent of less-educated whites say they’re at least somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of an African-American president; among better-educated whites that declines to 4 percent. As noted, there’s a similar effect on comfort with a woman president – and McCain’s age is a far bigger negative than either of these.

(*may not be technically not true (the appalacia part I cannot remember the movie well enough, but play along -- it will help with my Branson jokes at a later date)