14 months ago
WASHINGTON,DC(WUSA)---In the heated race for the Democratic presidential nomination, new remarks by Sen. Hillary Clinton have raised the issue of race and which candidate can best appeal to a core constituency of the Democratic Party: working class white voters.
In an interview with Kathy Kiely of USA Today, Clinton described an Associated Press analysis of the primaries in North Carolina and Indiana " that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
Clinton is trying to convince the party's super delegates that she, better than Obama, can attract the voters needed to win the general election campaign against presumptive Republican nominee Arizona Senator John McCain. "The senator said she still sees herself as able to compete, and she wants to compete through the primary contests because she sees herself as the candidate who can pull in what she calls swing voters, working class voters, the white blue collar voters who the exit polls indicate have been reluctant to go with Senator Obama," Kiely told 9News Now.
"These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that," Clinton told Kiely.
"I was struck by her mention of the racial breakdown of the vote and I actually asked her again about that and whether she was concerned that this could be a racially divisive kind of move and whether it could be perceived that way, and she re- iterated her argument. I think she feels this is a strong argument," Kiely said.
Other political writers read the Kiely piece with interest, with some concluding it could end the Clinton campaign. "I think it closes off entirely, not that I think it wasn't already closed off, her chances for the nomination. And that's because she already has sore relations with the African American community. Now, by suggesting that her main appeal is to white voters, or least that's how it can be interpreted, I think it's given them further reason to say you know, enough of the Clintons," said Bill Beaman, the editor in chief of Politics Magazine "Super delegates are going to realize that if we go with Clinton at this point, we're writing off an important core constituency: the African American vote," Beaman said.
One Obama delegate who is also an old friend of Clinton, seemed surprised by the Clinton interview with Kiely. "I think the comments are uncharacteristic and, indeed, unworthy of all Hillary stands for," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the delegate who represents Washington ,DC in the House of Representatives and who doesn't want to believe Clinton is trading on race as a campaign strategy..
"I hope that when she mentioned white working people that's what she wasn't doing because she and Barack Obama have risen above both gender and race. And, so late in the campaign, she can't possibly get the nomination, it wouldn't make much sense for her to stoop to race, nor to imply that white working people wont vote for an African American. It defames him. It isn't true. He's shown it in Indiana where he bit right into the white so-called base," Norton told 9News Now.
"All kinds of things can be read into it that she did not mean. I tell you I have worked closely with her, she has a principled view of race. I think she has spoken in ways that she has not thought about. I think she will have to clarify that," Norton said.
Written by 9NEWS NOW
