More Trouble In TN-09

Another sign that "post-racial" America still needs work:

The primary election in August 2010 pits an unlikely officeholder a Jew in a deeply Christian region, a middle-age white man known for fighting for blacks and women against a prominent challenger. [...] The black candidate, former Mayor Willie W. Herenton of Memphis, has argued that Tennessee needs a black voice in its currently all-white delegation. He is running a blistering campaign against Representative Steve Cohen, a fellow Democrat with a precarious hold on the majority black district. “To know Steve Cohen is to know that he really does not think very much of African-Americans,” Mr. Herenton said in a recent radio interview on KWAM. “He’s played the black community well.”

Cohen faced similar attacks last year, when opponent Nikki Tinker ran an ad linking him to the Ku Klux Klan. But black voters did not take the bait; he trounced her by 60 points. Candidate Obama condemned the ad at the time, and, as Mark Kleiman writes, "Here’s hoping [the president] will do a fundraiser - soon."