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Obama racial issues may extend to Pa
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| Contributor | kal |
| Last Edited | kal Mar 22, 2008 05:55pm |
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| Category | General |
| News Date | Thursday, March 20, 2008 11:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Stephanie Gill, a bartender in a white working-class neighborhood, noticed the shift immediately.
A week ago, her customers at Rauchut’s Tavern in Tacony didn’t have much to say about Barack Obama. But when she returned to work Wednesday, a day after the Illinois senator attempted to quell the furor over his pastor’s racially incendiary remarks, the reaction inside the corner bar was raw and unapologetic.
“People are not happy with Obama,” Gill said. “It’s the race stuff.”
Obama has always been a tough sell in largely white Northeast Philadelphia and in the city's blue-collar river wards, a collection of white ethnic enclaves where customers at the local watering hole have often been born and raised in the neighborhood that supports it.
And his speech Tuesday, although widely praised by the pundit caste and Obama supporters, has only seemed to widen the gulf with the Budweiser class here.
More than a dozen interviews Wednesday found voters unmoved by Obama’s plea to move beyond racial divisions of the past. Despite baring himself with extraordinarily personal reflections on one of the most toxic issues of the day, a highly unusual move for a politician running for national office, the debate inside taverns and beauty shops here had barely moved beyond outrage aimed at the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s refusal to “disown” his longtime pastor.
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