Nate Silver over at the wonderfully geeky FiveThirtyEight.com related this story from his travels around the US to understand the ground games of the respective campaigns and the electorate:
So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
It’s like a Chapelle’s Show skit come to life. Besides laughter, I didn’t know how to react at first. Finally I decided that it was a measure of where we stand in this country on race: there may be racists out there, but maybe the force of racism isn’t what it once was.