Obama says Ferraro dividing Democrats [View All]

[THUNDER HANDS]

Source: Albany Times Union

By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press
Last updated: 4:42 p.m., Wednesday, March 12, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Democratic Sen. Barack Obama assailed as "slice and dice" politics Geraldine Ferraro's assertion that he wouldn't be where he is in the presidential race if he weren't black. The back-and-forth between the two Democratic trailblazers -- Obama, seeking to be the nation's first black president, and Ferraro, who was the first woman on a major party presidential ticket in 1984 -- continued for a second day as they made appearances on network and cable morning news programs.

"Part of what I think Geraldine Ferraro is doing, and I respect the fact that she was a trailblazer, is to participate in the kind of slice and dice politics that's about race and about gender and about this and that, and that's what Americans are tired of because they recognize that when we divide ourselves in that way we can't solve problems," Obama said on NBC's "Today" show. Later, at a news conference in Chicago, Obama said he did not think Ferraro's comments were racist. "I think that her comments were ridiculous. I think they were wrong-headed," he said. "The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African American named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public."

Ferraro, who was Walter Mondale's vice presidential running mate, said Wednesday that her remarks were not racist and had been taken out of context. She accused Obama's campaign of twisting her remarks to undercut his rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I was talking about historic candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these things, in 1984 if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice presidential candidate," Ferraro said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It had nothing to do with my qualification."

Ferraro said she has a 40-year history of opposing discrimination of all kinds, including race, and that she was outraged at criticism of her remarks by David Axelrod, Obama's chief media strategist, because he knows her and her record.




Read more: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=671364&category=&BCCode=&newsdate=3/12/2008