There's an explicitly racist mass murder in a historically black church in a state where the Confederate flag flies on the Statehouse grounds. You're a presidential candidate. Quick—how do you respond? Well, it depends which party you belong to.
If you're a Republican, maybe you claim the killer was targeting Christians, or you blame prescription drugs, or you simply say you don't know if it was about race. Or maybe you take the opportunity to crack some jokes about guns. On the subject of the flag, you dither and evade—until the Republican governor of South Carolina says it should come down. At that point, true profile in courage that you are, you too call for it to come down.
Then there are the Democrats running for president. On Saturday, Hillary Clinton spoke extensively and forcefully about racism, saying that:
... our problem is not all kooks and Klansman. It’s also in the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. It’s in the off-hand comments about not wanting ‘those people’ in the neighborhood.
And Clinton didn't have to change position on the issue of the flag:
In praising Haley’s decision in a tweet Monday, Clinton noted that she had opposed the Confederate flag “for years.”
She is not alone in the Democratic field. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is seeking the Democratic nomination, voiced outrage after the shootings and said Monday that the Confederate flag should be removed because it had become “a relic of our nation’s stained racial history.” Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley advocated tougher gun laws and said Sunday that the Confederate flag flying in Columbia was “a terribly jarring and callous sight.”
It's sad, pathetic even, that a mass murder like this exposes this kind of difference between the parties, that Republicans can't just face up to what it was about. But it did, and that has to highlight how broad and deep the gulf between the parties is that Republicans can't even admit—at least, not right off the bat, not until it becomes unavoidable—that a racist killing is a racist killing and a racist flag must come down.