Mission accomplished, Hillary:
With Clinton posing alongside pioneering Indy speedster Sarah Fisher, there were almost no African-Americans to be seen. Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama - for reasons that are disturbing.
"I'm kind of still up in the air between McCain and Hillary," said Jason Jenkins, 32, who cited information from a hoax e-mail as a reason to spurn Obama.
"I'll be honest with you. Barack scares the hell out of me,"he said. "He swore on the Koran."
Obama did manage to pull in many white voters, but still encountered similar sentiments from a man who refused to shake his hand at a diner in Greenwood, Ind.
"I can't stand him," the man said. "He's a Muslim. He's not even pro-American as far as I'm concerned."
Such feelings leave Clinton and the Democratic Party in a tough spot. With the largest number of remaining delegates nowbeing party insiders, they have to decide if Obama can overcome enough of that antipathy - essentially deciding if enough working-class whites will back away from the black candidate, whether because of the false Muslim rumors, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright flap or old-fashioned racism.
To reiterate: these are white Democrats talking.
So, thank God for Hillary Clinton. Had Obama just skated through the primaries unopposed, blame for all of this voter racism would have been laid exclusively and reflexively on Republicans. Don't get me wrong --- it will still happen to the GOP by November. But at least Hillary's white Democrats and Obama's black Democrats respectively own it right now.
(h/t: memeorandum)
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