This article raises some very good points:

no candidate in decades has won the Democratic nomination relying primarily on upscale voters. Obama isn't likely to break that pattern, especially because Clinton appears to be an acceptable, if not always riveting, choice for so much of the party.

Since Obama entered the campaign, the question he's faced most often is whether he is "black enough" to win votes from African Americans. But the more relevant issue may be whether Obama is "blue enough" to increase his support among blue-collar whites.

That being said, it misses some important factors -- Obama is drawing HUGE crowds in the heartland and everything I've seen indicates that when blue-collar, non-college-educated Democrats encounter Obama, they love him (unlike other "priest" candidates, who never really connected with average Americans).

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Ronald Brownstein:

Obama and blue collars: Do they fit?

History says he must reach working-class voters -- Hillary Clinton's stronghold.

March 25, 2007, LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-brownstein25mar25,0,6496358.column?coll=la-opinion-center

IN THE EARLY returns among the young, computer-savvy social networkers on the MySpace website, Barack Obama is running laps around Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama's MySpace page has attracted more than twice as many friends as Clinton's unofficial page on the site.

But when the two leading contenders for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination appeared earlier this month in Washington before a beefy, brush-cut audience at an International Assn. of Fire Fighters convention, the result was reversed. Obama received a tepid response while Clinton blew away the room when she followed him to the stage.