Clinton's Trump Card: Vote White

Hillary Clinton says she is in it "until there is a nominee." As Clinton tries to wrest the Democratic nomination away from Barack Obama, she has put her trump card on the table: race.

Clinton's comeback, such as it is, began in Pennsylvania. So it's fitting that she's channeling Frank Rizzo, the race-baiting mayor of Philadelphia. In 1978, Rizzo wanted to change the ~~rules~~ city charter so that he could run for a third consecutive term. He rallied support for the charter amendment by imploring his supporters to "Vote White."

Clinton told USA Today:

I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA Today. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson writes:

As a statement of fact, that's debatable at best. As a rationale for why Democratic Party superdelegates should pick her over Obama, it's a slap in the face to the party's most loyal constituency -- African Americans -- and a repudiation of principles the party claims to stand for. Here's what she's really saying to party leaders: There's no way that white people are going to vote for the black guy. Come November, you'll be sorry.

It bears remembering that no Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the white vote since President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. And neither will Obama – or Clinton.

As Jack and Jill Politics points out:

Democrats will certainly struggle to win without a substantial minority of white voters, but there's no question that they can't win without us.

So while black voters are expected to take a back seat, for Democrats, the road to the White House runs through black America.

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