Below The Beltway

In a post written before last night’s results were known, but in apparent anticipation of an Obama loss, Andrew Sullivan cites this from a USA Today article about the primary:

Why does political Pennsylvania behave like an adolescent boy’s club with a sign, “No girls or blacks allowed inside”?

After all, the state has great institutions of learning, sophisticated journalism, and a Philadelphia hall where some guy named Jefferson emblazoned the words “all men are created equal.”

So what happened? Here we turn to the gospel of James Carville when the “Ragin’ Cajun” was masterminding a campaign in Pennsylvania. Said Carville: Between Paoli (a Philly suburb) and Penn Hills (a Pittsburgh suburb) everything else is Alabama.

Pennsylvanians hate the “Alabama” quote that they say makes them into hicks. But political pros know it speaks truth about the state’s diffuse chunks — Philadelphia has elected a run of black mayors; Pittsburgh is surrounded by the steel-plant ghosts; the mostly rural “T” up the middle is as culturally traditional as the antebellum South.

When I moved from the South in 1957 to work on a Philadelphia newspaper, I was startled by the racial hostility. I saw the city’s first black baseball star, Richie Allen, booed viciously. I saw Frank Rizzo, a nightstick-toting police chief who arrested Black Panthers and photographed them nude, become its iconic mayor. I learned the city has its encrusted bailiwicks: the Irish river wards, Italian South Philly, huge swatches of black North Philly, leafy Chestnut Hill.

That’s a microcosm of the state — a collection of duchies from the Rust Belt across the middle’s red-brick towns to Philly’s steel towers, each frozen in its past. And that, I think, brings us to the reason Pennsylvania (until Obama and Clinton) has been so blind on gender and race.

To which Sullivan adds:

Pennsylvania has barely elected a black or a female politician to state-wide office. But you know what tends to count most: race. There’s a reason Pat Buchanan has warmed to Clinton.

In other words, those racist Pennsylvanians won’t/didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black. Pretty much the same thing that Governor Ed Rendell said back in February, for which he was roundly denounced. And, it’s not much better than Obama’s own bitter remarks earlier this month, because it reduces the choice that Pennsylvanians made to something motivated by racism rather than the mere fact that they preferred one candidate to the other.

Are there some Pennsylvanians who voted against Obama because of his race ? Probably, but there are also a lot of Pennsylvanians who voted for him because of his race, and I don’t see anyone ascribing venal motives to them.

No, Sully, the people of Pennsylvania aren’t racist, they’re just not stupid enough to fall for meaningless appeals to “hope” and “change”