Obama Amongst Blacks and Whites

My favorite political columnist is without a doubt Jonah Goldberg who writes for National Review and NRO. He has a really intriguing column here. He notes how Obama does (not surprisingly) very well among African-Americans and also well amongst whites in states with small African-American populations (e.g. Iowa, Maine). Hillary has done much better amongst whites in states that have large African-American populations. He suggests a possible reason:

Meanwhile, for working-class white liberals who live in places such as Iowa or Maine, it’s easy to see our racial divide in almost purely theoretical terms and therefore believe that purely rhetorical responses are sufficient; Obama says the right words, and that’s all we need. But for much of the rest of the country, people are more skeptical that high-flying talk about diversity and unity, married to fairly conventional liberal policies on affirmative action, immigration, and the like, will do much to solve the real problems we face. They may have never heard such rhetoric delivered so well. But they’ve certainly heard it before.

Interesting I thought.