Race in the Democratic Primary

Over the weekend, Salon.com had an interesting round table discussion of the role of race in the Democratic primary. I don't agree with everything said in the article, but a lot of good points are raised. Specifically, there are some important statements made about the confluence and confusion of race, culture, and socioeconomics. Also, I think Obama has moved away from a populist image (I recall his economic policies being labeled populist as well as socialist at the beginning of the primary), and he may need to go back to that image in order to win the <$50k/working-class/"low-information"/whatever crowd. Then again, he may not need to win these votes. (Note: the NYT article discusses white working-class voters.)

And here's one of my disagreements about the article. I think it's Wilentz who claims that they can't make any statements about the role of race really since the polling data is aggregate and they can't really know if any of Hillary's supporters were racist or not because they don't have any data on that. I submit to you the following clips:



And on a funnier, but also sad, note:



Obviously, these are only a few people and not necessarily representative of all WV voters. But I don't think you can just brush aside the fact that race played a role -- a very backwards, negative role -- in at least West Virginia.