Wayne O’Leary  Pennsylvania Polka  Identity politics is alive
and well in the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton’s nine-point
victory in the Keystone State primary displayed the hardy
resilience of the “old politics.” The kitchen-sink strategy
(throwing everything but) was refined into the Tonya Harding
strategy: politically kneecapping the opposition by ceaseless
personal attacks that played into lingering regional prejudices.
What the Clinton forces succeeded in doing in Pennsylvania was
to turn the primary campaign into an exercise in tribal warfare;
it was “our tribe” (white, religious, rural, working class)
against “their tribe” (black, secular, urban, “elitist”)—a kind
of red-state, blue-state divide. Cultural issues once more
trumped economic issues, showing how excruciatingly hard it is
to build a populist-progressive coalition across social lines.
Obama did his part to undermine his own cause with the
exceedingly dumb remark about economically downtrodden working-
class Pennsylvanians channeling their