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Clinton Receives Luke Warm Response After MLK Event
January 14, 2008 3:50 PM
ABC News' Kate Snow, Susan Kriskey and Eloise Harper Report: Hillary Clinton spoke to a less than enthusiastic crowd at an event honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. with union members focusing on security workers in New York. The speakers before Clinton were cheered and received a standing ovation. When Clinton took the stage there was applause but scattered boo's as members walked out of the hall.
The Democratic Senator from New York referenced King at the top of her speech saying, "It's a pleasure to be celebrating Dr. King's life and to be carrying forward his vision," and "you understand as Dr. King did that your cause was his cause." Clinton continued, "each of us, no matter who we are and where we started from, is a beneficiary of Dr. King."
Clinton did shift the tone to politics and after referencing the fact that there was a woman and an African-American running for president, Clinton said it "should cause our hearts to leap with joy and celebration" and said, "we need to bring together the democratic party." Clinton also said "both Senator Obama and I know that we are where we are today because of leaders like Dr King." There was applause after these remarks.
Some members of the audience said they admired Clinton but thought her remarks at the event to commemorate King were a bit awkward or out of place.
"It was ill-timed" said one woman, who said she thought the speech did not fit into the rest of the program.
When asked who he would support for President, one listener shrugged and nodded his head from side-to-side. "We'll see. We'll see," he said with a sigh.
Clinton, who has been embattled in conflict regarding race and comments she made about Martin Luther King last week, made it a point to share with the audience that her relationship with King dates back to her childhood.
"I remember hearing him speak when I went with my church in downtown Chicago to go and hear and see for myself someone who had burst through the stereotypes and the caricatures who could not be held back by being beaten or gassed or jailed."
After Clinton spoke the audience politely clapped for her, but she did not receive the praise and reception of those who spoke before she did.
January 14, 2008 in Bush, George W. | Permalink | User Comments (36)
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Response to Referen comments:
Also, if you look at what has been said over and over again during these past months; The Clinton's have been telling us that Barack Obama, isn't good enough to represent any race, or class of people. That is why this is so disheartening, the since of her” Entitlement
I guess that you do get the underlining meaning do you! Its the actions and their words, if you are able to pick up on the message that they are sending. So when she was on meet the press and she was saying how capable he is, well that great and all they why do you have your attack dogs going after him including her.
That is the underlining message, so we need to read between the lines, like the race card and the sexism crying moment and get the big picture!
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to spill the fuel! Just don't be around when you light the match, or you will go up in smoke like, Hillary and Bill comments!
Posted by: thomca2 | Jan 14, 2008 5:59:44 PM
She made her bed and now she has to sleep in it. I don't think anyone is accusing the Clintons of being racist. I think the point is that they are both playing race card with hardball tatics. Racism is something one beleives. Playing the race card is a tatic to win an election.
Posted by: Not Impressed | Jan 14, 2008 6:11:41 PM
Remember Hillary's "plantation" remarks? I can still hear her slipping into that "semi-black" accent and speech cadence. She is a manipulative phony through and through.
Posted by: Colfax | Jan 14, 2008 6:53:53 PM
AMERICAN'S UNITED 1-2-3 END THE
CLINTON-BUSH DYNASTY !!!! FOOD FOR THOUGHT SR BUSH AND MR. SLICK WILLY HIMSELF ARE GOOD BUDDIES. END IT! IT HELPS THE RICH, AND DOESN'T HELP THE MIDDLE WORKING CLASS!!! 1-2-3 END THE CLINTON-BUSH DYNASTY!!!
Posted by: BushClinton | Jan 14, 2008 7:08:56 PM
How can facts become so twisted and misconstrued? Hillary never played the race card. She wasn't playing dirty tactics. Her statement was misconstrued.
Hillary's comment was not in any way negative towards MLK. She only said that it takes a team of people to make something happen. It takes someone with vision and communication skills (MLK), it takes others who can ingrain that vision into our legal system by passing the Civil Rights Act (LBJ). Both are important. Obama is particularly strong on vision. Hillary is particularly strong on execution. So Hillary is pointing out that vision alone is not going to drive the change in this country. It's going to take vision and execution. I think the MLK and LBJ analogy is a good one. In fact, Clinton and Obama would be a terrific team. Vision and execution = leadership.
Hillary said nothing about race. She was talking about two human beings who were catalysts for some of the most exciting change in this country.
Posted by: chermathews | Jan 14, 2008 7:40:44 PM
i don't think her comments were racially charged, i think they were simply poorly stated, to the misfortune of both her campaign and the Black community.
we know Hil isn't racist, but she is woefully misrepresented by her own staff, and should take this opportunity to find out who is behind a lot of the things going wrong in her campaign, and hand him/her/them a pink slip.
Posted by: mimi | Jan 14, 2008 8:16:15 PM
um.
Who's Luke Warm?
Posted by: mario | Jan 14, 2008 8:51:43 PM
Hillary was attempting to take some of the momentum away from Obama, because most people realized that Obama reminded them of MLK, nad JFK, so her tactful remarks back fired, and now she's back peddling. I dislike her and will never vote for her.
Posted by: rhonda | Jan 14, 2008 10:52:45 PM
Tara I went to the web site you listed, that was bill's record, not hillary's. It's time to turn the page. Who running Bill or Hillary
Posted by: rhonda | Jan 14, 2008 10:59:39 PM
This is like the workplace, these campaigns. You say something and some people think you mean something else.
This all a non issue. The media is trying to create controversy, and you are falling for it.
Both Obama and Hillary are natural leaders, dedicated Americans, very ambitious, and yes it's ok for a woman to be ambitious, and they both have an excellent intellect and are stong emotionally and mentally.
Hopefully they'll both be President one day...one right after the other one. My own dream....sixteen years of Democrats in the White House. Oh, how great it would be!!!
Posted by: Jee Wilson | Jan 15, 2008 12:42:48 AM
Finally! Americans are showing that they can distinguish "faked" from "real". The Clintons will tell you everything you want to hear until they get what they want. Let's give a young, honest, energetic politician the chance to start a new political era in the U.S.A.
Posted by: carmen | Jan 15, 2008 4:24:09 AM
The person who has fallen the farthest during this slap fight, in my estimation, is Bill Clinton. There is something truly undignified about a former president sloshing around in the sewer of primary politics.
Posted by: green heron | Jan 15, 2008 6:23:40 AM
I totally agree with Carmen. The words ' I did not have an affair with that woman' echoed in my mind as I watched Bill spin his web. Bill Clinton has done a lot of great things but telling the truth is not one of them.
Posted by: Not Impressed | Jan 15, 2008 9:06:30 AM
Hillary is not racist. She's not. The Obama camp doesn't think so either. What she is - Karl Rove reincarnated. Obama used examples of us reaching for the impossible: JFK's going to the moon till people reached for it or showing MLK's dream being realized when thousands reached for it.
Hillary's words were meant to misinform the uninformed. To paint an untrue picture of Sen. Obama.
From saying he is against pro-choice which she knows is flatly untrue.
From distorting his consistance opposition to the war - which she knows is flatly untrue.
He is ethical and, like us, want a change from all of the lying, backstabbing, doing anything to win politics.
It is a shame because most Dems going into this said we will back whomever the dem nominee is. Now so many, SO MANY are saying they could NEVER support her. She's divided our party and proves all of the "years" she spent working for causes was just building a resume. She cares for nothing but winning.
Posted by: Mary | Jan 15, 2008 9:37:07 AM
This is how the game is played when the stakes are high: The Clinton surrogates - who have no direct links to the Hillary campaign, and are thus supposedly acting on their own - don't like the fact that the Nevada Democratic party is making it easy for unionized casino workers to participate in the Saturday caucuses. So they've sued to stop the process.
The state Democratic party has been busy setting up meeting sites at nine big casinos, so that members of the powerful Culinary Workers Union - as well as any non-union workers within a two-mile radius of the sites - can choose a candidate during their work break. That seems like a reasonable idea - so reasonable, in fact, that the Democratic National Committee overwhelmingly approved the plan last spring; and so reasonable that nary a whisper of dissent was voiced by any of the Democratic presidential candidates.
Indeed, when Hillary left Iowa last week, she lamented the fact that so many working people were unable to participate in those caucuses, due to their work schedules. As she told ABC News, "You have a limited period of time on one day to have your voices heard. That is troubling to me. You know, in a situation of a caucus, people who work during that time - they're disenfranchised."
But all of a sudden, Hillary's surrogates are now claiming that the Nevada Democratic plan violates the U.S. Constitution, and that therefore these "at large" caucus sites - which are actually intended to enfranchise more working people - should be eliminated.
I'm just wondering: Could this lawsuit, filed late Friday, have anything to do with the fact that the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union gave its much-coveted endorsement, 48 hours earlier, to Barack Obama?
Kirsten Searer, the state party's deputy executive director, is quoted as saying that, ever since the caucus rules were OKed by the national Democrats last May, "the campaigns have been fully informed throughout the process." There hadn't been a shred of protest from the Hillary camp about the plans for casino caucus sites; nor had there been any protest from the pro-Hillary folks who have now filed the lawsuit. In fact, some of those pro-Hillary folks are members of the state party, and they participated in the March 31, 2007 meeting that OKed the plan...unanimously.
Officially, Hillary's campaign says it knows nothing about the laswuit and, as the candidate herself said this weekend, "I have no opinion on the lawsuit." So we are supposed to believe that she and her campaign have no connection whatsoever to the plaintiffs, who happen to include the Nevada State Education Association teacher's union, whose deputy executive director is a founding member of Hillary's Nevada Women's Leadership Council. And it's perhaps sheer coincidence that the law firm pushing the suit is Hillary-friendly; several senior partners have given her money, and one prominent lawyer in the firm, ex-congressman James Bilbray, has endorsed her and has been campaigning for her. (Here's Hillary, yesterday: "I don't think it's supporters of mine. There seems to be some misunderstanding about that.")
Hillary has complained for years that the 2000 post-election Florida crisis was an insult to democracy, an attempt by Republicans to disenfranchise minorities by suppressing their votes. It's hard to see how she is well served today by exposing herself to that same charge in Nevada - particularly when it is being leveled by a pro-Democratic union official whose members include large numbers of working-class Hispanics ("This is an attempt to wholesale disenfranchise people who are largely women, largely people of color, and people who do the kind of work that makes this town go").
Posted by: Mary | Jan 15, 2008 10:39:09 AM
Ho hum... While Clinton was getting booed by knowledgeable African-Americans, ignorant ones like Charlie Rangel were calling Obama's remarks [merely wonder why HRC complained about Cong. John Clyburn's remarks] "absolutely idiotic."
Rangel and Robert Johnson are absolutely idiotic to support a pair of con-people like the Clinton Inc. duo.
Posted by: daveinboca | Jan 15, 2008 4:32:44 PM
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