Geraldine Ferraro is refusing to back off her declaration that Barack Obama is where he is right now because he is black:
Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro today defended a remark she made to the Daily Breeze last week, in which she suggested that Sen. Barack Obama would not be where he is if he were white.
In an interview with the Breeze, Ferraro said, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
The comment was picked up by political blogs and cable news shows across the country. The Obama campaign held a conference call today to denounce the remark, and Obama surrogates urged Sen. Hillary Clinton to repudiate it.
In a follow-up interview today, Ferraro said her company had been deluged with vicious e-mail messages accusing her of racism.But far from backing off from her initial remark, Ferraro defended it and elaborated on it.
“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”
Watch Ferraro tell Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that as someone who has “fought discrimination for 40 years” she is “absolutely offended” by the outraged phone calls and e-mails she’s been getting for saying that Obama is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination only because he is black.
Yesterday, Obama and his chief political adviser condemned Ferraro’s remarks (which she made last week):
Obama called Ferraro’s comments “patently absurd.”
“I don’t think Geraldine Ferraro’s comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive. I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd,” he told the Allentown Morning Call. “And I would expect that the same way those comments don’t have a place in my campaign they shouldn’t have a place in Senator Clinton‘s either.”
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Ferraro should be removed from her position with the Clinton campaign because of her comments.
“The bottom line is this, when you wink and nod at offensive statements, you’re really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes,” Axelrod said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.
“There’s no other way to send a serious signal that you want to police the tone of this campaign,” he added. “And if you don’t do those things then you are simply adding to the growing compendium of evidence that you really are encouraging that.”
Axelrod said Clinton has encountered problems because people view her as a “divisive and polarizing force.”
“The best way to address those concerns is to not allow divisiveness and negativity to flourish among your supporters,” he said. “And this is an opportunity for her to address that.”
The Clinton campaign’s response so far: halfhearted attempts to “distance itself” from Ferraro — a key supporter of and fundraiser for the Clinton campaign — while declining to disavow or condemn what she said.
In a brief Associated Press interview Tuesday while in Harrisburg, Pa., Clinton said she did not agree with Ferraro. She added, “It’s regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.”
Yeah, Hillary; tell us how Obama has consistently, continuously, for weeks and weeks now, been conducting a smear campaign against you, using insinuation, distortion, innuendo, and outright lies to impugn your religious beliefs, associations, and personal integrity.
The hypocrisy — the sheer chutzpah — of Clinton and her campaign staff seem to be limitless (bolds mine):
… Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams is suggesting that it’s the Obama camp that played the race card in the dust-up over the Ferraro comments.
Williams has a new statement out that points to this video of Obama at a recent debate, in which he seems to say that he doesn’t agree with his supporters’ efforts to highlight a pattern of racially-charged remarks coming from the Clinton camp.
“Senator Obama’s campaign staff seems to have forgotten his pledge,” Williams continues. “We have not. And, we reject these false, personal and politically calculated attacks on the eve of a primary.”
While the statement does reiterate Hillary’s disagreement today with Ferraro’s suggestion that he’s where he is politically because of his race, there’s no repudiation or rejection of the comments. Instead, there’s this strong insinuation from Williams that the Obama camp’s criticism of Ferraro’s comment amounts to playing the race card in some way.
Unapologetic, defiant, refusing to budge, flipping the accusations back in the face of the Obama camp. Given Ferraro’s original comments, this is a curious response indeed — one that stands in stark (and probably deliberate) contrast to Samantha Power’s prompt resignation in the wake of her “monster” comment.
Don Frederick, who contributes to “Top of the Ticket” at the Los Angeles Times, points out the irony in Ferraro’s complaint that Obama only has this political success because of his skin color:
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” she said for an article aptly headlined “Geraldine Ferraro lets her emotions do the talking.”
She went on: “And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
Well, of course, all successful national politicians happen to be “very lucky” to be who they are. A certain current president benefited from being the son of a former White House occupant. And a certain current contender wasn’t hurt by being the wife …
of an ex-president.
Ferraro’s “analysis” also overlooks Obama’s skills as an orator and the talent he’s shown in assembling a first-rate political team that has outmaneuvered Clinton and her strategists in a number of key ways.
But what will gall many the most about Ferraro’s take on Obama is that were it not for her gender, she would not be in a position where Clinton sought her out to be a high-profile member of her finance team or reporters seek her out for comment.
Ferraro, 72, had been in the House less than six years when Walter Mondale chose her as his running mate in the 1984 presidential campaign. Outside of her New York district and Capitol Hill, few had heard of her. She was picked because Mondale wanted to break a barrier — selecting the first (and, so far, only) woman for a major-party presidential ticket.
Ben Smith is having flashbacks:
“If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race,” she said.
Really. The cite is an April 15, 1988 Washington Post story (byline: Howard Kurtz), available only on Nexis.
Here’s the full context:
Placid of demeanor but pointed in his rhetoric, Jackson struck out repeatedly today against those who suggest his race has been an asset in the campaign. President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don’t ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his “radical” views, “if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.”
Asked about this at a campaign stop in Buffalo, Jackson at first seemed ready to pounce fiercely on his critics. But then he stopped, took a breath, and said quietly, “Millions of Americans have a point of view different from” Ferraro’s.
Discussing the same point in Washington, Jackson said, “We campaigned across the South . . . without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got North to New York that we began to hear this from Koch, President Reagan and then Mrs. Ferraro . . . . Some people are making hysteria while I’m making history.”
Good segue to today’s election news. Not only did Obama get the expected win in Mississippi yesterday; he also is the winner of Texas’s Democratic caucuses, which puts him ahead of Clinton in number of Texas delegates, even though Clinton won the Texas primary:
Under the Texas Democratic Party’s complex delegate selection plan, Texas voters participated in both a primary and caucuses on March 4. Two-thirds of the state’s 193 delegates were at stake at the primary, while the remaining third were decided by the caucuses.
An additional 35 superdelegates were not tied to either contest. Clinton, of New York, defeated Obama in the primary by a 51-47 percent margin. But results of the caucuses were up in the air on election night and for several days afterward, due to state party rules that did not require local caucus officials to report their results to a centralized location.
Partial caucus results, representing 41 percent of all caucus precincts, showed Obama last week with 56 percent of the county-level delegates chosen at the caucuses to 44 percent for Clinton. The state party says it will not be able to provide a further breakdown of the caucus results from March 4.
After a comprehensive review of these results, CNN estimates that Obama won more support from Texas caucus-goers than Clinton. Based on the state party’s tally, Obama’s caucus victory translates into 38 national convention delegates, compared to 29 for Clinton.
And though Clinton won more delegates than Obama in the primary, 65 to 61, Obama’s wider delegate margin in the caucuses gives him the overall statewide delegate lead, 99 to 94 — or once superdelegate endorsements are factored in, 109 to 106.
Kathy
Liberty Street 