Clinton Apologizes to Black Voters for Racial Comments
WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did something Wednesday night that she almost never does. She apologized. And once she started, she didn’t seem able to stop.
The New York senator, who is in a tight race with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, struck several sorry notes at an evening forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group of more than 200 black community newspapers across the country.
Her biggest apology came in response to a question about comments by her husband, Bill Clinton, after the South Carolina primary, which Obama won handily. Bill Clinton said Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, a comment many viewed as belittling Obama’s success.
“I want to put that in context. You know I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive,” Hillary Clinton said. “We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama.”
“Anyone who has followed my husband’s public life or my public life know very well where we have stood and what we have stood for and who we have stood with,” she said, acknowledging that whoever wins the nomination will have to heal the wounds of a bruising, historic contest.
“Once one of us has the nomination there will be a great effort to unify the Democratic party and we will do so, because, remember I have a lot of supporters who have voted for me in very large numbers and I would expect them to support Senator Obama if he were the nominee,” she said.
The Clintons long have enjoyed overwhelming support from black voters, but that has been eclipsed during the primaries and caucuses by enthusiasm and support for Obama, who has pulled huge margins among black voters. Arguments over the role of race and gender have flared up repeatedly throughout the contest between Obama, who would be the nation’s first black president, and Clinton, who would be its first female one.
Earlier in the day, Hillary Clinton supporter and fundraiser Geraldine Ferraro gave up her honorary position with Clinton’s campaign after she said in an interview last week that Obama would not have made it this far if he were white. Obama said Ferraro’s remarks were “ridiculous” and “wrong-headed.”
Of Ferraro’s comment, Hillary Clinton told her audience: “I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply that it was said. Obviously she doesn’t speak for the campaign, she doesn’t speak for any of my positions, and she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee.”
As first lady and senator, Clinton rarely cedes an inch to her critics. On the issue of her vote to authorize the Iraq war, for instance, she steadfastly has refused to apologize, coming close by saying she regrets it, despite calls from many anti-war voters in the party to make a more explicit mea culpa.
Her third conciliatory statement of the evening was more in keeping with that fighting stance.
Asked about the government’s efforts in the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina, Hillary Clinton turned an apology into a criticism of President Bush, who happened to be speaking at a Republican event in another room at the same hotel.
“I’ve said it publicly, and I say it privately: I apologize, and I am embarrassed that our government so mistreated our fellow citizens … It was a national disgrace,” she said.
This entire issueabout Obama is insane at the very least. I never agree with anything that Ferraro says but in this instance she is right on the mark. Now it would seem that not only is Barack Obama immune from any type of criticism because he is the black candidate but now it is off limits to even mention that he is black or question his qualifications to be president. I guess poor John McCain’s hands are going to be tied, he can only expect to have criticism heaped on him daily by Obama but he will not be able to say even one bad word about Obama for fear of being labeled a racist. This whole race issue is out of control.
It is obvious if Obama was a white man with the same credentials he would not have gotten out of the first primary with a single vote, only because he is an black eloquent speaker is he in the game at all. Face it, a first term senator with zero experience. Come on, get real. If Obama is elected president this country is in for a rough time, he will surrender the United States to Al Qaeda just as he has promised to surrender in Iraq.
I am glad to see Ferraro quit because of her comments! We don’t need people acting like that and saying things like that; not at a time when we need to be speaking words that promote unity between our citizens. You must be very bitter Ferraro and certainly, without a doubt, very misguided by your team to have made such a comment. Get plugged in Ferraro to what is happening. Start producing something positive with your comments rather than something negative. Give me something substantial I can process in my mind, would you?
Hillary being embarrassed that our government treated our citizens so badly regarding the response to Hurricane Kartina is such hot air. I am currently taking a master’s degree level class in emergency and disaster management. Since Katrina was the most costly disaster in American history, we are, of course, studying it. Many people want to blame the federal government and George Bush. If anyone stops to take a close look at the timeline leading up to Katrina making landfall, they will see that the majority of the miscues, if you want to use that term, came from the local and state levels…in other words, the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana. The fact is that neither one of them followed their own written hurricane plans. The mayor did not order a mandatory evacuation, despite being URGED to by the president and the head of the National Weather Service. The federal government and President Bush took the heretofor unheard of step of declaring a federal disaster BEFORE the hurricane even hit the Gulf Coast. That opened the way for tons of supplies to start heading towards the areas expected to be hit.
There is so much more to say about this disaster, but I don’t want to bore anyone more than I already have. I just urge people to look at the facts, look at the timelines, look at the amounts of food and water made available before the storm hit. Look at how disasterous Louisiana was and how much better Mississippi did. That’s because the governor there followed his plans and put them into motion in enough time to greatly diminish the effects of the storm on his people.
too little, too late.
I feel that if any of the consultants or committee members of the Republican candidates had said something, there would have been a far greater outcry among the Democrats, and the media, for the CANDIDATE to resign along with the person who made the comment.
Where is the public furor over these obviously racially motivated comments?
There is none because only Republicans could possibly be racist.
This is why we as a country cannot work together and get over the past together….there are too many different sets of rules for too many people and those rules become more flexible depending on how “enlightened” or, rather, how liberal one is.
The Clintons are a bunch of phonies and their campaign is run by their phonie cronies.
Go Barack.
The comments weren’t really that racist. If people start crying racist all the time over small issues the word is going to loose it’s effect. We need to save the word for when someone who actually is racist comes along.
WHILE I DON’T BELIEVE HILLARY CLINTON NEEDED TO APOLOGIZE FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S REMARKS, SHE WAS GRACIOUS TO DO SO. HOW ANYONE COULD BELIEVE THAT HILLARY OR BILL CLINTON WERE RACIST IS BEYOND MY UNDERSTANDING. ALL ONE HAS TO DO IS LOOK AT THEIR HISTORY WITH THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. AND, WHILE I DO NOT THINK BARACK OBAMA HIMSELF HAS PLAYED THE RACE CARD, I BELIEVE SOME IN HIS CAMPAIGN HAVE. HOPEFULLY, HILLARY CAN MOVE FORWARD IN HER CAMPAIGN TO WIN THE NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. GO HILLARY!
Hilary Your apology Not accepted. Ferraro should have been fired immediatly.ByYou. You have showed America you cannot make a decision. Remember your RED PHONE. Yor failed the test
Hillary cannot apologize without ending with a stab at someone else.
She should apologize to the Democrats for surrounding herself with losers.
Madame President? I don’t think so.
“Anyone who has followed my husband’s public life or my public life know very well where we have stood and what we have stood for and who we have stood with,” is a true statement.
Not all of us Blacks have been hoodwinked by the Clintons. Some of us know exactly what they stood for and who. During the Clinton administration the only time they stood by Blacks was for a photo opt. I can not think any significant thing they did for Blacks while Bill was in office for eight years and Hillary’s brief service in the the senate. In other words, the only time, they stood with Blacks (or should I say allowed Blacks to stand with them), it was a political facade. When the cameras were gone, just like Socks the cat, so were the Blacks. As hard as the Democrats tried years ago they could not keep the slaves on the plantation and their Jim Crow laws could not keep Blacks voting. Rather you support Obama or not, one thing you have to admit, he is bringing out some folks’ true color.