This message is for that oppressed, neglected, passed over, bitter, gun-toting group of people otherwise known as working-class white males: You really don’t matter. To all the hand-wringing over Sen. Barack Obama’s alleged problem with winning over the votes of those white men, let’s counter with some other facts.

Obama has a lot of company. John Kerry. Al Gore. Bill Clinton. Michael Dukakis. Walter Mondale. Jimmy Carter. Just to name the six most recent Democratic nominees who lost the white, working-class, male vote.

In a matchup with Sen. John McCain, Sen. Hillary Clinton does no better than Obama among these voters, even though her candidacy is now portrayed as the second coming of Norma Rae.

The non-partisan Pew Research Center’s latest survey shows that Obama and Clinton both would get 45 percent of the overall white vote in a matchup against McCain. Obama’s appeal to white-collar men compensates for his shortcomings among blue-collar men, loosely defined as voters with only a high school education.

George Bush won 58 percent of the votes of all whites in 2004 and he won 54 percent of the votes of all whites in 2000. Among white males, you have to go back to 1964 to find a Democrat who won a majority, and that was Lyndon Johnson. Bill Clinton came close, winning a plurality in his 1996 rout of Republican Bob Dole.

There are a number of theories why working-class, white males have so abandoned the party they had joined with such vigor during the New Deal. The cultural identity of the Democratic Party changed, with a focus on civil rights, gender equality and opposition to the Vietnam War. Other programs of the Great Society helped to build a sturdy allegiance among minorities, while at the same time engendering resentment among many working-class white men.

The pinnacle of the working-class white male’s importance seemed to come in 1980, when the Reagan Democrat was born. Then the Republican landslide in 1994, fueled by the “angry white male,” delivered a historic takeover of the House of Representatives.

“You see that Obama’s overall standing among whites is not dramatically different than Kerry’s but also not out of line with where recent Democratic candidates have been,” said Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center.

In fact, going head-to-head against McCain, Obama and Clinton have identical numbers among all white voters; the Republican leads both 50 percent to 45 percent.

As a measure of the potential perils of Obama’s candidacy, the Clinton campaign also likes to highlight the number of Democratic voters who say they would not vote for Obama in the fall. But that measure is at best imprecise.

Look at surveys from the 2000 campaign, for example. At one point, 51 percent of people who were strong McCain supporters in that year’s Republican primaries said they would support Democrat Al Gore in the general election. In November, though, they went largely for George W. Bush.

Obama needs those voters who call themselves Democrats.

But Obama’s bigger challenge, and greater opportunity, given that neither he nor Clinton is likely to reverse the trend among working-class white males, is among white women.

A Gallup Poll released last week showed both Obama and Clinton trailing McCain by a larger margin than in the Pew poll. But Clinton was beating the Republican among white women.

In general, Gallup editor Frank Newport writes, “Obama and Clinton perform exactly the same among non-Hispanic white men when pitted against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Both Obama and Clinton lose to McCain among this group … 36 percent to 57 percent.”

So as Obama’s campaign goes forward, rather than worrying about bowling, beer or duck hunting, he needs to win over those women voters who are pulled so powerfully to Clinton’s campaign.

Michael Tackett is the Chicago Tribune’s Washington bureau chief.