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.
Hillary is the best @ pandering to her audience, she will say or do anything necessary to win. The Clinton legacy is ” take no prisoners”. Her marriage is a sham & this campaign is the same, the fact is we cannot afford her & socialist policies. Oil is $109. a barrel & she can only blame Bush, in fact it is her husband’s idiotic policy of no new exploration that got us here, let us be done with the Clinton, as Oliver Cromwell said”In the name of God-Go”.
In every community there are men and women who transcend communal cultural and other divisions to speak for all. Such people may be rare but they are the ones who give meaning to the term common humanity. They through their personality unite people who may otherwise be at each others throat. Such peronalities innclude Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi and Martin Luther King to mention a few. Without these people it is an open question whether human race would have survived this long on this planet. Without wanting to elevate Barack Obama to their level I can say without fear of contradiction that he has a little bit of them in him.
Hilliary must think Americans are really stupid. Who does she think she is kidding?
I am White and against Obama. But that has nothing to do with his race. It has to do with his policy statements which I believe to be naive in the extreme. I will be voting for McCain because I do not believe in redistribution of wealth and a pacifist international policy and I do believe nothing can stop globalization and that lower tax rates have shown, beyond doubt, that they yield higher tax revenues.
Be that as it may, it is obvious that Ferraro was given the task of forcing race onto the agenda in the Democrat primaries. Why? Because Hillary knows she will not get the African-American vote (African-Americans will vote for Obama simply because he is African-American, without regard to what Obama stands, racism in and of itself, of course.).
So she needs to pry away any and all voters that are white and might have been persuaded to vote for Obama, even though he is African-American. What better way to do so than to have a surrogate raise race as an issue and therefore remind white voters that they should not forget their prejudices and get caught up in Obama’s rhetoric.
Hardly surprising a tactic, especially when one understands that The Clintons will say or do anything to win.
But I believe the American people, in general, are above such approaches. Obama need only say how sad it is that Hillary’s camp would stoop to such tactics, that he will not get into a discussion on race because he believes it is of no moment. What is important is the difference in positions and approaches—end of story.
Obama should win the nomination. But I would bet he will lose the Presidency because his issues and ideas do not hold water once the glitz and excitement are removed. Nevertheless, the Civil War will finally be over with an Obama candidacy and that is all to the good for our country.
what can i say but BO in ‘08.
Hilarious. In her “apology” she still manages to try and associate Obama with Jesse Jackson. Nice smear.
Oh boy, here we go.
She’s headed down the road on another crying jag.
Now if the apology mode doesn’t work what’s she going to use?
Here we go again just like with Bill, She will say whatever it takes. Remember she also said that she agreed that FL and MI votes would NOT count when they first held the elections early and knew that they would face consequences for the action. Flip Flop!
democratic campaign is getting very ugly.
Hillary is an idiot. The government took 3 days to respond to Katrina. Living in a hurrican area (Miami) you are told to have enough supplies to last 3 days before help arrives. Because the people of New Orleans are lazy, dependent on government for everything, prone to committing crimes, uneducated, they were poorly prepared. When are we as a society going to hold people accountable for what happens to them? Why couldn’t the citizens of New Orleans plan ahead and gather supplies to last them until help arrived? Aren’t they responsible for their own well being? I guess because the vast majority of them rely on government programs, welfare, SSI, unemployment and food stamps, they never bothered to plan for the disaster which they knew was coming days and days in advance. It’s not like Katrina snuck up on them without any warning. I can’t stand it when these political idiots blame the U.S. Government for failing the people of New Orleans. The local government and the people that live there failed themselves. The bottom line- Don’t rely on or plan on the U.S. Government to come to your aide and you’ll be more self-sufficient and have a much better chance of survival. The citizenry of New Orleans need only to point the shameless finger of blame at themselves, not the U.S.G.
Billary, Billary….tsk, tsk
Blacks have abandoned you and no amount of butt kissing will get them back.
So much for loyalty, huh?