On Sunday January 20, 2008, former President Bill Clinton appeared in the atrium of Ellicott Square in Buffalo, New York. He spoke to approximately 200 loyal democratic Hillary supporters. During his speech Bill Clinton again inserted the issue of Senator Barack Obama’s race into the 2008 presidential election.
It appears that Bill is making a conscious effort to derail Obama’s campaign strategy to run not as a black candidate but as the best person for the highest office in the land. It is my belief that the former president is using the race card in an effort to get out the white vote for Hillary Clinton.
In a video of the event in Buffalo, President Clinton made statements that appeared innocent on face value. The statements to a mostly white audience included a reference that Hillary would understand it if black voters in South Carolina voted for Obama because he is a black man.”
Robert J. McCarthy in an article in The Buffalo News wrote: “Because Obama is already becoming a factor in New York, the former president appealed to his wife’s political base to turn out the vote that will result in the delegates needed to deliver the nomination. ‘You’ve got to stick with her’ he told his enthusiastic audience. ‘We need a big, big, big vote out of New York.’”
President Clinton continues to violate our faith, trust, and previous support for both of the Clintons. On January 23, 2008, Andrea Mitchell reported that former president Clinton isn’t backing down or changing his tactics of inserting the race issue into Senator Clinton’s bid for the White House. To support the above-mentioned fact Mitchell quoted Bill’s statement to reporters “ That having a woman as president is as much of a change as having a black man as president.”
Black people expect the Republicans to use race as a fear tactic to get out the white vote but we do not and should not tolerate Bill Clinton’s continual use of “ race” to defeat Senator Barack Obama during primaries elections.
Prominent and elected black supporters of Senator Clinton (congresswoman Shelia Jackson-Lee, Andrew Young, and Charles B.Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee) in her quest for the presidency should voice their outrage that the Clinton’s are engaging in the divisive campaign tactic of race.
Vera Richardson is the author of “A Case of Racial Discrimination and Retaliation Real or Imagined.”
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