Ah, I love the smell of Democrats playing the race card in the morning!

The Democrat in this case? Why, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, now in Week Two of her realization that she doesn’t get the Democratic presidential nomination handed to her just because her last name is Clinton.

Clinton trails Sen. Barack Obama in the number of superdelegates and regular delegates. Some political observers have noted that she has no chance of winning the nomination, but she’s vowed to stay in the race until the bitter end. Many have asked why, and the answer may have come last week, when African-American columnist Richard Prince wrote about what Clinton said regarding the West Virginia primary.

According to Prince, Clinton cited a news report about Obama’s support among whites. Here is part of her direct quote, which pretty much speaks for itself: “Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and … whites in (Indiana and North Carolina) who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Whites in Indiana and North Carolina were, in days gone by, usually the ones found hiding behind the hooded sheets of the Ku Klux Klan. You know, the kind that black activist Robert F. Williams and his famous “Negroes With Guns” had to regulate in Monroe, North Carolina back in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Or the ones in Indiana who, in the early 20th century, purged three counties of their black populations.

Is that the kind of “hardworking” and non-college educated white voter Clinton is now courting? Well, apparently so.

Prince cited several bloggers and pundits who were appalled by Clinton’s remarks. Prince himself wrote that “to many, it was a shocking statement -- equating ‘hard-working Americans’ with ‘white Americans’ and a naked attempt to cast herself as ‘the white candidate’ in the race.”

But is anybody really surprised by this? Didn’t Clinton already play the race card in the Pennsylvania primary?

Clinton won that primary, as Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell predicted she would. And there’s no reason she shouldn’t have. I have black friends and associates in Philadelphia who have characterized their state as Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh on the other and either -- take your pick -- Alabama or Mississippi in between.

And Philadelphia had Frank Rizzo as its mayor at one point.

It was in a suburban Philadelphia hospital several years ago that a white guy -- no “friend of the Negro” was this fellow -- who demanded that hospital staff not allow black nurses or other black employees anywhere near him. And dimwitted supervisors at this particular hospital didn’t have any better sense than to comply with this Nazi’s wishes.

Those are the kind of white voters who gave Clinton her victory in Pennsylvania. And you can bet quite a few of them cast their ballots for her in Indiana and West Virginia too.

Before Election Day in Pennsylvania, Clinton was on the stump in Philadelphia, chiding Obama for saying the campaign had left him a little fatigued. Clinton hopped on that remark by invocating, of all people, Rocky Balboa. How would Rocky have done, Clinton asked, if he’d quit because he was tired as he ran up those famous art museum steps?

You see how playing the white supremacist card blinds you to reality? Rocky Balboa is a FICTIONAL character, one cobbled together to appeal to the white supremacist found in all too many white Americans. And what’s really insulting is that the man who created the character, actor Sylvester Stallone, based some characteristics of Rocky on real-life Philadelphia heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier.

There is a statue of Rocky Balboa in Philadelphia. Frazier, who’s high up on my list of the top 10 greatest heavyweights of all time, has yet to get his.

Clinton knew that by invoking Rocky Balboa, she was appealing to white supremacist sentiment in a state that’s, well, Philly on one end, Pittsburgh on the other and either Alabama or Mississippi in between.

Now she’s trotted out her white supremacist card again by making a subtle appeal for white Democrats who’ve NEVER voted for a black candidate for any office in their lives to vote as they’ve always voted. Black conservatives, for years, have been trying to tell black folks that we were only of use to white Democrats as long as white Democrats ran the party. Heck, Malcolm X said it long before we did.

Somewhere Brother Malcolm must be smiling. It took over 40 years, but Hillary Clinton has come along to prove how right he was.