Letters to the Editor
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Obama can have a serious discussion about race ... can Clinton?
It's amazing how quickly everyone seems to forget Obama's groundbreaking speech, when the Wright issue first raised itself, that spoke with candor about race in a way we haven't seen in this country, perhaps ever.
(Should I be surprised that Walsh has forgotten that speech? I suppose not. That Walsh would write a headline that is so clearly refuted by a well-known speech Obama gave is simply par for the course at this time.)
Can Obama win white voters? You mean, like those in Iowa, Oregon, and Washington?
Why yes, he clearly can. He only failed to win "white voters" if you mean, as Clinton evidently does, "White voters in states where Clinton has done well - who are generally blue collar and poorly-educated, and older."
Any REAL look at the demographics does suggest that Obama does have a problem - with older white women. That problems starts to vanish if you look at younger white women, or older white men, or older non-white women, or ... well, you can spot the trend here.
Undoubtably, a lot of those older white women are voting for Clinton for reasons related to the politics of identity (which is undoubtably also part of the reason why Obama is doing so well among black voters). But whereas Clinton has done a lot of antagonize blacks, making some of us worry if they'll turn out in large numbers to vote for her, has Obama done anything similar to antagonize older white women - a vote which turns out to vote pretty reliably, regardless of the gender of the candidate?
This is not the first time in the race when it's appeared that the Clintons have tried to create a race problem. Maybe we should focus on the ways that Obama has transcended race by bringing large numbers of whites into the fold, rather than doing the Clinton campaign's work for them by hyping up a problem that really isn't anywhere as big as the Clintons would like it to be.