Here's the numbers nationally from the NYTimes: "About half of black Democratic primary voters — 49 percent — said they planned to vote for Mr. Obama, while 34 percent said they backed Mrs. Clinton. Among white Democratic primary voters, 42 percent said they were supporting Mrs. Clinton, while 24 percent said they backed Mr. Obama." According to the census, nationally, 71% of whites are registered, 61% of blacks, and 54% of Latinos. In 2004 whites had 67% turnout, blacks 60%.
Bill Clinton's remarks about Obama's record on Iraq as a "fairy tail" have been taken out of context and given a racial overtone, as if he was talking about Obama and the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edwards is perpetuating this confusion.
The larger context though is Hillary's remarks about King and LBJ:
“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Clinton told FOX News last week in remarks that sparked the current conflict. “It took a president to get it done.”
On Sunday, Clinton complained that Obama has been misrepresenting her words and their meaning. She said Obama has been comparing himself to King and President John F. Kennedy, who began the process that led to landmark civil rights legislation. But unlike King, who Clinton noted had marched, organized, protested, and was gassed, beaten and jailed, Obama is merely giving speeches about his commitment to racial equality.
“(King) understood he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power,” Clinton told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“And he campaigned for political leaders, including Lyndon Johnson, because he wanted somebody in the White House who would act on what he had devoted his life to achieving . So I think it’s important to set the record straight. Clearly, we know from media reports that the Obama campaign (is) deliberately distorting this.”
Clinton added that King deserves “the lion share of the credit” for moving the country and political process forward, but he couldn’t have done it without “partners who were in the political system.”
“I think it is such an unfair and unwarranted attempt to misrepresent and mischaracterize what I’ve said,” Clinton added.
Obama's response:Later, in Las Vegas, Obama said he was "baffled" by Clinton's suggestion that his campaign has tried to make hay out of her statement.
"She made an ill-advised statement about Dr. King, suggesting that Lyndon Johnson had more to do with the Civil Rights Act," Obama said. "I did not make the statement. I haven't commented on the statement. For them to suggest that we're injecting race as a consequence of a statement she made that we haven't commented on is pretty hard to figure out."
I heard a lady call into Morning Edition a couple days ago and complain about what she called the Clinton campaigns "racist tactics" and claim that her view was widely shared in her circle. She lives in Ohio. She didn't cite any of the above, but rather the Clinton campaign's earlier bringing up of Obama's drug use. Here's Robert Novak's column on it:
Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.
This word-of-mouth among Democrats makes Obama look vulnerable and Clinton look prudent. It comes during a dip for the front-running Clinton after she refused to take a stand on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's now discarded plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens.
Experienced Democratic political operatives believe Clinton wants to avoid a repetition of 2004, when attacks on each other by presidential candidates Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt were mutually destructive and facilitated John Kerry's nomination.
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