Discussing the NYC mayor race, columnist Gail Collins talks about de Blasio's successful campaign ad featuring his bi-racial son.
The real key to the Dante ad was not that it reminded black voters that the candidate had an African-American wife. It was the way it appealed to our multiethnic yearning for racial harmony. The de Blasio family seems so happy. The pictures of them laughing together remind you both of how far we’ve come and where we’d like to go. It’s the same effect the nation got when Barack Obama talked about his background and you remembered that when Obama was born, less than 10 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage.
Contrast that feeling with the one you get when you think about the coalition that succeeded earlier in the week in Colorado, you remember: "the party of murders, rapists, and hunters who need an Uzi to take down Bambi."
