WaPo: Indiana Voters a Bunch of Racist Hicks

You can expect plenty of these stories between now and election day. The general theme will be if you don't like Barack Obama, you're a racist redneck.

The Washington Post today willingly relates anecdotal stories without providing any shred of evidence to verify them. For all we know these stories are completely fabricated.

I'm not saying there may not be some cases of people saying these things. But this just seem too stereotyped about what racist people might say.

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

C'mon, is there anyone out there that still calls someone darky? Frankly, I've never heard anyone utter that term.

Consider also that Obama has won a number of overwhelmingly white states and this just doesn't add up.

Obama has won five of 12 primaries in which black voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and caucuses in states such as Idaho and Wyoming that are overwhelmingly white. But exit polls show he has struggled to attract white voters who didn't attend college and earn less than $50,000 a year. Today, he and Hillary Clinton square off in West Virginia, a state where she is favored and where the votes of working-class whites will again be closely watched.

Update: Jennifer Rubin at Commentary has some thoughts.

You can debate whether Judis is correct (or whether Obama’s disdain for the lives and values of working-class whites is to blame for his poor showing with certain blocs of voters–remember, it’s never his fault), but one thing is certain: the Left seems ready to bludgeon Americans, state by state, if they choose to reject the Agent of Change. It’s racism pure and simple if we don’t all embrace the great Obama.

Update II: Now this is really stupid.