Will Hillary Clinton have her Pee Wee Reese moment tonight?
That is, the moment she figuratively drapes her arm around Barack Obama and tells her 18 million followers that it’s OK to like him, defend him and — dare we say — vote for him?
Congressman Jesse L. Jackson Jr. on Monday likened Obama to Jackie Robinson, the black baseball player who broke the league’s color barrier. Like Robinson, Obama “can’t hit back,” Jackson said.
“He has to keep smiling, because no one wants an angry African-American in the White House,” Jackson said at a breakfast forum sponsored by The Post, Politico and Yahoo News, held at the Denver Athletic Club.
What Obama needs, he said, is a Pee Wee Reese.
Reese was the first Brooklyn Dodger to walk across the field during Robinson’s first spring training to shake his hand. And one day, when Robinson was enduring racial taunts from an opposing team, Reese “kind of sensed the sort of hopeless, dead feeling in me and came over and stood beside me for awhile,” Robinson later recalled. “He didn’t say a word but he looked over at the chaps who were yelling at me through him and just stared. He was standing by me, I could tell you that.”
Reese’s actions have been lionized over the years as heroic, but it’s important at this moment to remember why he did what he did: He was the Dodgers’ captain, and Reese needed unity on his team.
With a new poll out this week showing millions of Hillary Clinton’s followers still thinking about backing John McCain, Obama needs a big-time Pee Wee Reese moment from Hillary if he expects to win a majority of 50-50 America.
And he needs it tonight.
Dan Haley (dhaley@denverpost.com) is editor of the editorial page.
