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Clinton and Obama heal party rift on racial issues

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

January 15, 2008

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama signaled a truce yesterday after several days of sparring over racial issues, amid growing signs their fight for the Democratic nomination is splintering their party.

Clinton received a mixed reception - a smattering of boos sprinkled into polite applause - during a hastily scheduled speech before a predominantly black audience at a union-sponsored Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in midtown Manhattan.

"How many of us ever could have dreamed that we would see the day that a woman and an African-American were running for president of the United States of America?" asked a conciliatory Clinton, whom Obama backers criticized for suggesting Martin Luther King Jr. needed President Lyndon B. Johnson's help to enact civil rights reforms.

"Senator Obama and I know we are where we are today because of leaders like Dr. King," she told members of the Local 32BJ building workers union.

Obama, speaking at a campaign stop in Reno, described the Democratic Party as a "family," adding, "What I want to avoid is dividing the party."

A Rasmussen daily tracking poll released yesterday showed black Democrats now favor the Illinois senator over Clinton 66 percent to 16 percent. In December, Clinton's support among African-Americans was in the mid-20s. By contrast, Clinton leads Obama among whites, 41 percent to 27 percent, the poll shows.

"I think black voters are starting to wake up to the reality that Barack Obama might be president," said Pace University politics professor Chris Malone, who studies racial voting patterns. "It's ironic, but it took Obama's strong showing in Iowa and New Hampshire to wake them up. The white voters in these two small states are voting for a black candidate and that's propelling black voters in South Carolina and other places to take him seriously."

The Clintons, he added, "are used to being the blackest people in an election - they don't know how to run when faced with a real African-American."

The former first lady has come under fire from some black leaders - including an influential South Carolina congressman - for her LBJ remarks. On Sunday, just as the furor seemed to be dying down, BET founder Bob Johnson, one of her top black supporters, made what seemed to be a veiled reference to Barack Obama's admitted youthful drug use.

"The overall tone of the Clinton campaign after Senator Obama's success in Iowa, for a lot of people, looked ugly - it looked like a downright dirty fight," said Obama supporter Clinton Miller, pastor of the Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn, after listening to the New York senator yesterday.

On Sunday, Clinton said similar comments were part of the Obama campaign's attempt to "deliberately distort" her record.

Bill Clinton, whom author Toni Morrison once described as "America's first black president," has also come under fire for saying Obama's portrayal of himself as a consistent opponent of the Iraq war was a "fairy tale."

On Sunday, Michelle Obama, the candidate's wife, took issue with the former president's "fairy tale" line during a speech in Atlanta in which she addressed voters' racial concerns head-on.

Her husband is the right candidate, she argued, "not because of the color of his skin, but because of the quality and consistency of his character," adding "I know about the sense of doubt and fear about what the future holds ... There are a lot of doubters and naysayers out there talking about, 'I'm not sure America is ready for a black president.'"

Bill Clinton, who will be a guest on Al Sharpton's radio show today, seemed less willing to make nice, telling an interviewer yesterday that he was compiling a "list" of dozens of disparaging remarks Obama and his operatives have made about his wife.