It's His Color

People can itch in their pants all they want about Hillary staying in the race but this is required information. The heat of the general election would be far too late for Obama to realize that his mass appeal is not so mass or magic. I cannot say that he will be able to win this vote but there is absolutely no need in him being blindsided. What will be his plan of attack?

Mike Rife is white, a semiretired factory worker with a high school education and a 2-foot-square sign on his lawn that makes friends and neighbors flip him the finger as they drive by.

The sign reads: "Obama for President."

"I think I almost know what it feels like to be a black guy," said Rife, his voice gravelly and defiant. "I take heat every day. I got an Obama sticker on my car, and I catch hell for it."

Munfordville is the seat of Hart County, a rural swath of Kentucky farmland. Its Democrats will vote, and vote hard, for Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's primary. And if Barack Obama goes on to win the nomination, many of those Bluegrass State Democrats say they will vote against him quicker than you can say, "Race doesn't matter."

"They won't vote for a black man," Rife said of the people he has lived around all his 57 years. "That's all there is to it. They just can't bring themselves to do it."

A walk around this central Kentucky town of 1,600 supports Rife's opinion. Whether in the Dairy Queen or the dollar store or along the sidewalks of a courthouse square ringed with shuttered businesses, people speak freely of their dislike for the lanky senator from Illinois.

Terry Jordan, 47, who runs a year-round garage sale in front of an old filling station on Main Street, put it simply: "It's his color."
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