The first 18 years of my life were spent in Pennsylvania. I know all too well the demographics of the state. Outside of Philly and liberal enclaves in other cities, racism still persists. The suburbs of Pittsburgh where I grew up were no exception to that. The Klan was still around and I had my own run-ins with Neo-Nazis. I say all this as a precursor to saying that Will Bunch has it nailed in this post.

ntentionally or not, “Archie Bunker’s congresswoman” was relaying the exact message that the Clinton campaign really wants out there, not in Torrence, Calif., or back in Queens but right here in Pennsylvania, in the mostly white rowhouse “river wards” of Philadelphia and a lot of working class burgs, from Scranton all the way down to the former steel towns of the Mon Valley.

Why do you think Clinton has distanced herself from the remark, but not so much really? And why do you think Geraldine Ferraro herself has been neither rejected nor denounced by the Clinton campaign?

Think of it this way. It was easy for Obama to reject and denounce an out-there hatemonger like Louis Farrakhan, and it should have been easy for John McCain to fully reject and denounce anti-Catholic whack job John Hagee (why he hasn’t is mindboggling). But the Clinton campaign can’t reject and denounce Geraldine Ferraro, because it would be rejecting and denouncing itself.

A sculptor brought in to mold a Hillary Clinton voter would have crafted Geraldine Ferraro from scratch. She’s 72 years old now. White. Female. Ethnic. Catholic. Emotionally vested in the idea that a woman should become president in her lifetime. Hailing from the community that was once the face of white middle-class America. Got where she was with the enthusiastic backing of New York big labor. Has views on the role of race in American politics that aren’t exactly ready for prime time, but well, hey, once they get out there you can’t really put the genie back in the bottle, now can you?

Pennsylvania is chock full of voters like this, many of them Democrats. You can — and should — argue whether “Archie Bunker” is a valid stereotype of Pennsylvania voters in 2008. Bloomberg News has already been out with its take on Obama’s “Archie Bunker” problem. It noted how Obama’s poor showing with blue collar and Appalachian whites in Ohio and stuggled to find supporters in a white ethnic neighborhood in his hometown of Chicago:

There is a good reason why Clinton did not demand that Ferraro immediately resign on Friday. There is a reason why she let her go on numerous other interviews and dig her self an even bigger bigot hole. The Clinton campaign thinks having Ferraro speaking her mind is a net benefit for them with the voters they are trying to bring in. That is more important to them than pushing back against racist commentary. They care more about winning than anything else. That is what has me the most scared about the continuation of this campaign. Somethings are more important than winning. I don’t think the Clinton campaign feels the same way.

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