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This may sound far flung but I think the Cosby Show is instructive here. Shelby Steele has pointed out that Cosby basically made an unspoken deal with the American public that he would not challenge them on their racist past and in exchange he woud be accepted as mainstream. He gets success and the whites get to come down off the hook for 30 minutes a week and feel like things are progressing on the race front. Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Micheal Jordan, Sammy Davis, and many others have entered into a similiar bargain. "Roots" was one of the highest rated television events in history because it embodied this same spirit. As long as he stays within those parameters he's golden. This was why Billl Clinton tried to compare him to Jesse Jackson. Jackson is what Steele calls a "challenger". He never misses a chance to remind whites of their sins. Clinton instinctively understands that this is the game and he was trying to de-Cosby Obama a little bit. It doesn't appear to have been enough to win the war but maybe it was helpful in West Virginia. I say this to point out that the race issue is not as simple as enlightened whites vs. peckerwood racists. There's a lot of subconcious stuff going on. Under the surface resentments on both sides have a great impact on things even though we don't realize it. Bill Clinton, I would suggest, is angry right now with Black America because he feels betrayed by them even though even the most ardent Obama booster would be loathe to acknowledge it. The overt racists, to the extent that they really exist, are not the issue we really face. Nobody thinks of themselves in those terms and nobody wants to be accused of being racist. That's why Obama has to be careful.