Well, there are no small wins in this contest as Obama has shown. And getting 2 more delegates than Shrillary is better than splitting or getting less. And now, on to Pennsylvania... well there is Mississippi, but everyone is really waiting for the big Pennsylvania face off.
Ugh.
I grew up in Pennsylvania and not a more racially charged northern state can I imagine (other than Ohio). When I go home to Pittsburgh I can still see the vestiges of racist incidents past. Personal ones. The Catholic schoolyard where, as one of the few black kids in the entire school, I was beaten on and called nigger by an older white kid who didn't think I should dare tag his superior white skin as "It!" I remember the entire schoolyard watching me be humiliated. Then there was the time my family went to look at a house for sale but never even made it out of the car because the seller saw we were black and told the realtor he wouldn't sell to us. There are others, but you get the idea. So PA Governor Ed "Fast Eddie" Rendell probably was correct when he said of the state that, " ... there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate."
Yes, I imagine some of them are still there. I knew a lot of the as kids. Went to school with them because, my parents thought the benefits of a private school education outweighed the racist bullshit I had to put up with to get it and they were right. Allowing ignorant fools to limit your options is always wrong. And that is what ignorant Gov. Rendell was trying to put forth when he suggested that Barack's candidacy was not to be valued because there where still ignorant whites who would not support him.
Not only did he want to limit Barack's option in this instance, he wanted to limit the country's options by depriving them of a viable candidate. My suspicions are the will be that segent (as in Ohio) that will never consider Barack because of race. And I suspect that that group will be mainly comprised of poor uneducated white Pennsylvanians.
It is interesting to note that at the white catholic elementary school I went to the students were from primarily poor, working class families of little education. This is the school I faced the most racism. The white private highschool I went to however had students from very wealthy and well-educated families. There I experienced some ignorance of who black people were (which was to be expected as I was also ignorant about them), but no overt racism that I can recall. These educated whites are the ones that have been showing up for Obama all along. Problem is Pennsylvania may still have more of the blue-collar (code words for "poor" and "uneducated") whites than I would care to see. But Rendell would know. They voted for him.
I am still optimistic however. There are good people there. When I go back I do notice some things have gotten better. I have hope that the Keystone Hate can become the Keystone State for Obama.
