The current campaign season at its beginning seemed to indicate that America was living out its creed, that all of us are created equal, that we had become a place where people were judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. The dreams of King and Kennedy had been realized in a beautiful irony 40 years after their deaths. Tragically King's country and Kennedy's party have rejected that dream.

The analysis of the WV's results both by Mrs. Clinton and the media emphasizes Obama's failure to appeal to "white working class voters." The implication is that he is like them. The fact is that Obama is a product of the white working class. His values are working class values. His father contributed the color of his skin but his grandfather, a WWII veteran who worked to support his family and entered the middle class via the GI bill shaped the content of his character. Having achieved academic success (although burdened w/ debt as most children of the working class) Obama took up service of working people.

Mrs. Clinton comes of the relative privilege of the suburban business owning class. She became a partner in a corporate law firm and a Wal-mart board member. She condoned the sexual harassment that all too often befalls women who lack the protection of powerful men. She and her husband have made over 100 million dollars most of it from what my white working class father would have described as stuff no self respecting grownup should do.

The media have decided that she is the champion of white working people, while he fails to win them because he is so different from them. Obviously it is not the content of his or her character. That leaves only the color of his skin.

Very Hillary Clinton, Ed Rendel & her other supporters bear great responsibility for this. A decent Democrat might have made the "observations" (Uncle Tom Rangel) she did. But a decent Democrat or a decent American would have then deplored them. But the media who have slavishly parroted this reasoning bear their share of the blame.

Very little responsibility goes to the decent working people who have been hoodwinked. If the media and the Clintons tell them that they should not trust some one because the color of his skin makes him so different from them that he cannot understand and represent them, if the media refuses to discuss what these two very different people have actually done of course the people are fooled.

We are better than this. We must do better than this. We have serious problems arising from electing the guy we'd like to have a beer with. Age, gender, and skin color do not matter. Character and commitment do.

Amazing conclusions. The Clinton's were one of the poorest presidential families in recent history. You tout the legacy of Kennedy who certainly came from the elite.

This country, and as Obama says anyone can succeed which is what the Clinton's did. They did not come from wealth but made it the American way which you might find objectionable but they generated wealth through their own means.

I know very little about Obama's financial life but I suspect that there something more to the story. I paid for my education and when I graduated I got a job helping the handicapped which was very rewarding but paid crap. I moved on to other jobs because I had to pay back my loans which probably were trivial compared to what Obama would have had if he paid for his education. Working on the streets would not be a choice he would have been able to make. Perhaps he made some side money somewhere.

Most amazing to me is to suggest that Hillary voters have been duped and are by and large voting for her based upon her color. Yet that is not an issue with black Obama voters.

I think it is absolutely true that some of Hillary's voters vote for her because she is White just like I think it is true that some of Obama's voters vote for him because he is black.

We are a long way from only seeing the content of their character.

Miriamac,

While I agree with some of your arguments, I think that you are overly hasty to conclude that race is the primary reason that working class white voters support Sen. Clinton. I believe that there are a number of other factors related to class and style that tend to make these voters support her.

Obama presents himself as slick, professional, and highly educated. Consequently, he appeals to younger voters and intellectuals. Sen. Clinton's supporters want us to believe that it is only the black vote that is winning votes for Obama. If we look a the numbers, he does extremely well in urban areas and college towns, both places with highly educated populations. Given his appeal in these areas, Obama has cultivated that image. Additionally, Obama's emotional, optimistic messages really appeal to liberals who have been missing a Kennedy-esque leader for a long time.

Sen. Clinton has more of a 'woman of the people' message. Clearly she is just as well educated and smart as Sen. Obama, but she presents it differently. Her New Hampsire crying incident, real or contrived, was exactly what appeals to those voters. She really seems to care about the working class. That is reinforced by the fact that many of these voters were doing much better in the Bill Clinton administration than they are today. Older, poorer, and less educated voters who are used to getting the shaft from their elected leaders are far less likely to buy into Obama's optimisim. Instead they like Hillary's ideas about health care and education, even if they don't necessarily like how she might try to pay for it. Given her appeal in this area, Sen. Clinton has tailored her message to that constituency.

I do think that African American voters are voting for Sen. Obama in large part because he is black. Not that they do not have other good reasons to vote for him, but given the overwhelming support from this community for Obama, it is hard to reach any other conclusion.

skin color matters to the 95% of black voters who support obama

Presuming that your figure is correct, you somehow know that all of these voters are motivated by the racial difference?

if 90% of white voters went with clinton you would be screaming that they were klensmen

No I wouldn't.

In fact, 90% (or some such) of white WV voters did go for Clinton, and I'm not saying they're racist.

That kind of assumption would be assinine. Of course, we don't know that they're not racially motivated either. The point is that we don't know.