March 12, 2008 -- JACKSON, Miss. - "Racial tensions between Hillary Rodham Clinton's and Barack Obama's camps boiled over yesterday after former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro's explosive comments that Obama got where he is because of his race.
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," said Ferraro, one of Clinton's most prominent supporters and a member of her fund-raising team.
"And if he was a woman [of any color] he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," Ferraro told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif.
The remarks set Obama and his camp fuming.
"I don't think Geraldine Ferraro's comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive," Obama told the Allentown Morning Call.
"I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd. And I would expect that the same way those comments don't have a place in my campaign, they shouldn't have a place in Senator Clinton's either."
Top Obama adviser David Axelrod told reporters: "The bottom line is this, when you wink and nod at offensive statements, you're really sending a signal to your supporters that anything goes."
Clinton, asked about Ferraro's comments, said: "I do not agree with that.
"It's regrettable that any of our supporters - on both sides, because we both have this experience - say things that kind of veer off into the personal," she added. "We ought to keep this on the issues."
But Ferraro was defiant, telling the Daily Breeze in a follow-up: "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 . . . Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"
She added that sexism is a bigger problem and said Axelrod "knows damn well that the best thing to do in a situation like this is to come back and hit with race."
And she told Fox News that she was "offended" by the reactions she'd gotten.
Ferraro, a former Queens congresswoman, ran for vice president with Walter Mondale in 1984.
In her remarks, Ferraro also blamed a "sexist media" for giving Obama a free ride.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), an Obama supporter, said "I respect every person's right to promote his or her candidate, but any and all remarks that diminish Senator Obama's candidacy because of his race are completely out of line."
The Obama camp already was steaming after what it considered a pattern of using race issues preceding the South Carolina primary.
On the eve of Clinton's defeat there, hubby Bill Clinton reminded voters that Jesse Jackson had also won a primary there, which some observers considered an effort to diminish Obama as a "black" phenomenon, despite his widespread appeal among white voters.
Meanwhile, Axelrod told reporters the campaign has concerns about a proposal for Florida and Michigan to redo their primaries with mail-in votes.
"I mean, there are concerns about eligibility, ballot security" and preparation time, he said, adding it took Oregon more than a decade to perfect it."
Sweet geez but I never thought I'd be agreeing with the softer side of the 1984 Dem-Ticket of Fritz & Titz, but YOU GO GIRL!
If jughead were all white instead of half, the Dems wouldn't give him a second look. Gotta have that modern guilt-trip draw of either coming from some oppressed minority or telling us that the sky is falling, and an all-white Obo wouldn't fit the bill.
But, being a full fledged loon, old Squints then blows it by offering that sexism is of course worse than racism because perhaps she once saw an old bondage flick where some busty chick was chained and forced to pick cotton. Maybe, hell I dunno I'm not as crazy as these commies.
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