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.
If there is anyone that is a national disgrace, it is her (and her husband). I am pleasantly surprised to learn of her apology, yet realistic enough to know that it will be politics as usual for her going forward…divisive statements, back room deals, and blackmail (just to name a few of the cogs in the Clinton “machine”). I am utterly amazed that anyone would vote for her.
……the 35 years experience is all about how to take the whole nation for a ride… I don’t trust this candidate
How many times have the Clinton’s apologized during this campaign? It is obivious that they will say anyting, do anything, and then deny they did it, to try and win this race. Do we really want another four years of the Clintons in the White House. I hate to think so. Remember what they did to our military during Bill’s time in the White House. It is clear that they have no honor and no character. Is this who we want leading our country? Heaven help us, if that is what happens.
these comments just show a pattern of the evil and corrupt people behind her. she has more skeletons in her closet then a graveyard. and as far as katrina, why did the state of La. have the only complaints about fema? thins went fairly well everywhere else. the reason is the local and state goverment failed and was trying to get fema to bail them out and when they explained they were just there for support of state programs they were used as a scape goat cause they had no plan to support. as far as the levy, well anyone in there right mind knows you cant build one strong enough for a cat 4 or cat 5 storm. again the corp of engineers were scape goats. bill
The real question is whether anyone thinks that Geraldine Ferraro was actually helping the Clinton campaign with her comments. I thought she was supposed to be fundraising–not giving interviews to the media. If I were Hillary Clinton, I would be outraged at Ferraro’s ineptitude.
Nice to say… but it is too little too late. They have released a video Obama’s EX-pastor (who is retired) defending him and sounding angry. With one hand Hillary cries tears of sorry, and with the slight of hand keeping the tensions and the subject going. I am sick of her, sick of this campaign, and tired of America’s hatred.
The thing I and probably a lot of voters notice is the clean campaign that Obama and Clinton were running up until the point that Hillary started losing. I’m glad that Obama is above the mudslinging and dirty politics that Hillary is so willing to play. Hillary Clinton’s strategy is obviously to have her supporters say the things she really wants to say so when she’s confronted about it she can distance herself by saying “I didn’t say that, ______ said it.” People are tired of the old politics and the old politicians and are dying for someone new.
The only REAL apology Senator Clinton needs to make, is an apology for the way she and the former President has run her ruthless campaign at the expense of a divided Democratic Party and Nation. I think our courtry has finally seen the last of the Clinton’s in a political role, the weight of the ‘win at all cost’ evidence is overwhelming. We have had ENOUGH!!
So much about Hilary’s experience ..
“I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around,” he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely “the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets” during elections. “She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.”
Mrs Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am.
“I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland,” she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years
Hillary should have apologized after New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Now it is to late!
Obama 2008!