Let's hear from the only black person present at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board meeting where Hillary supporter Ed Rendell said this:
[O]ur voluble governor weighed in on the primary fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and what the Illinois senator could expect from the good people of Pennsylvania at the polls:How many of these race eruptions do we have to have from the Clinton campaign before people finally accept that they're all simply random misunderstandings? (Hat tip, TPM Election Central.)
"You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate," he said bluntly. Our eyes only met briefly, perhaps because the governor wanted to spare the only black guy in the room from feeling self-conscious for backing an obvious loser....
I know I have a habit of sometimes zoning out in these meetings, but it sounded to me like Mr. Rendell had unilaterally declared Pennsylvania to be Alabama circa 1963. Was he suggesting that Pennsylvanians are uniquely racist in ways that folks in the states Mr. Obama has won so far aren't? By the way, Mr. Obama won Alabama on Super Tuesday, thank you very much!
What accounts for Mr. Rendell's overweening confidence that, no matter what, he'll always find a way to overcome the odds by at least 17 points even in a racist commonwealth, but that Mr. Obama can't?
If Mr. Rendell, a Clinton backer, is right about Pennsylvania's racial attitudes, maybe we should get a new state slogan. How about: "You've got a friend with a pointy white hood in Pennsylvania"?
