Those are the words of Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be on a presidential-campaign ticket in 1984, who served as a member of Sen. Hillary Clinton's finance committee. Ferraro made the comments in an interview in The Daily Breeze, which essentially cast Obama as an affirmative-action baby who is neither qualified nor prepared for the presidency. The remarks cost Ferraro her position with the campaign as she announced late Wednesday she was stepping down.
What do you think about Ferraro's comments? Tell us what you think.
The attack on Obama's qualifications baffles Hillary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington Bureau, who says Ferraro's comments were "very hurtful, unnecessary and quite frankly taint this presidential contest."
"[Ferraro] was saying that Mr. Obama's experiences and capabilities have nothing to do with the success that he's enjoying right now. That it is simply because of his form … that it's because he's an African American running for president at a time when America is most receptive and most demanding of major change and that he respects that change at so many levels," says Shelton. "If it's taken in that context, then that's very troubling."
David Bositis, a senior political analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which analyzes political issues from a Black perspective, believes Ferraro is playing the role handed out to her by the Clinton camp ... race baiter. "That seems to clearly be her role in this campaign," he says.
The Obama camp has demanded Clinton denounce Ferraro and remove her from the campaign. But, despite the firestorm of controversy that has ensued, Ferraro initially refused to back down and Clinton offered only a token condemnation of the remarks at first, saying she "regrets that it was said," reports MSNBC.com.
But does she? Ferraro's comments are only the latest in a series of racially charged maneuverings emanating from the Clinton camp, which have included former President Bill Clinton dismissing earlier wins by Obama as echoing the earlier futile presidential run of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. In recent months, the Clinton camp was also forced to dismiss staffers for promoting a hoax e-mail chain falsely alleging that Obama is a Muslim. Yet another high-ranking staffer, Bill Shaheen, was forced to resign after making inappropriate comments about Obama and drug use.
Far from muzzling Ferraro, the Clinton campaign has sat back idly while Ferraro has continued on the offensive, painting herself as a media victim. "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, according to MSNBC.com. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"
These are not unfamiliar waters for Ferraro. In an April 15, 1988, article in The Washington Post, Ferraro made practically identical comments regarding the presidential run of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, reports Politico.com. "If Jesse Jackson were not Black, he wouldn't be in the race," Ferraro said.
So her recent comments regarding Obama come as no surprise to Bositis. "She's been saying racially coded things all through the campaign. There was a news story earlier this year where she referred to Black voters as Obama's base, when in fact, for almost all of this campaign, Black voters have not been Obama's base," he says.
Instead, Bositis says many Black voters were leaning more toward Clinton than Obama early in the campaign. "It wasn't that they were Obama's base. It's that Hillary and the Clintons lost the Black vote," says Bositis.
Obama comes off a dominant victory in yesterday's Mississippi primary that was all but ignored in the wake of Ferraro's racially charged comments. The Mississippi win helped Obama add to his delegate lead over Clinton as the pair head to a critical showdown in Pennsylvania on April 22.
Bositis believes Obama's unexpected success led the Clinton camp to make a critical misstep on how to use race in the campaign. "Once they realized that Obama was going to be a problem, they made a calculated gamble to use race, and in my estimation it was a mistake," says Bositis. "They thought it would gain them among whites and Hispanics, and arguably it has gained them some. But its cost them as much or more among Blacks."
Shelton, who says the NAACP will not take an official side in the duel between Obama and Clinton, nonetheless believes it's regrettable that the historic contest between a Black man and a woman vying for the White House is being sullied by racial politics.
But Shelton is also confident that voters are savvy enough to see through misleading racial assaults and take Obama's senatorial experience at face value.
"Mr. Obama has proven himself to be very extraordinary in being able to get things done," says Shelton.
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