Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton came under fire Thursday for roiling racial waters again by asserting that she, and not rival Democrat Barack Obama, can attract enough white voters to forge a “winning coalition.”
“There was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how the whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me,” Clinton told USA Today on Wednesday.
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she added. “There’s a pattern emerging here.”
Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, told The Examiner that Clinton’s assertion was off base.
“We’ve won more than twice as many contests as she has with a broad coalition of voters,” Burton said.
The Obama campaign does not intend to aggressively push back against Clinton’s comments. Burton said Obama has no plans to describe the remarks as insulting to blue-collar whites in Kentucky and West Virginia, both Clinton-leaning states that will hold primariessoon.
Adding to the racial tension in the campaign were remarks made by Paul Begala, who was a top aide to former President Bill Clinton and now supports Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. He said Tuesday that Obama has not yet proven he can “reach out to those working-class white folks and Latinos.”
“We can’t win with eggheads and African-Americans,” Begala said on CNN. “He’s got to stop with all the arguments for the Volvo drivin’, NPR totebag totin’ liberals. He needs to talk to middle-class working people.”
Fellow Democrat Donna Brazile shot back: “We need to not divide and polarize the Democratic Party, as if the Democratic Party will rely simply on white, blue-collar males. You insult every black blue-collar Democrat by saying that. So stop the divisions. Stop trying to split us into these groups, Paul.”
This is not the first time race has become an issue in the Democraticpresidential primary. In January, Bill Clinton tried to diminish Obama’s victory in South Carolina by pointing out that Jesse Jackson won the state in two earlier presidential cycles. When Clinton was criticized for the remark, he sought to turn the tables by accusing the Obama campaign of “playing the race card” against him.
Obama has not been without his own racial missteps. He once described his white grandmother as a “typical white person” because she feared and stereotyped blacks.
Also, Obama has spent weeks trying to distance himself from the anti-white rhetoric of his incendiary ex-pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Although Clinton has done well among white voters, Obama routinely wins at least 90 percent of black voters.
