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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is scrambling to shore up support among black voters and tamp down charges that her presidential campaign has been playing the race card.
Following her thumping defeat by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the South Carolina primary, the former first lady secured an important endorsement Tuesday from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), an influential member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and a leader of the Out of Iraq Caucus.
But, underlining Clinton’s recent problems on race, another of her leading black supporters, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), on Tuesday described former President Bill Clinton’s handling of the issue as “more emotional than presidential.”
Clinton’s efforts to shore up her image heading into Tuesday’s Florida primary and the supremely important primaries of Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, come as Obama too is piling up endorsements to burnish his credentials.
On Monday, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) endorsed Obama at a big rally with other prominent members of the Kennedy clan — an event widely viewed as a rebuke of the Clinton campaign’s tactics in recent days.
In announcing Waters’s endorsement, the Clinton campaign tried to underscore that the senator still enjoys a wealth of good will within the black community as well as key allies in the states that make up next Tuesday’s near-national primary.
Waters said in her endorsement that Clinton has broad appeal with voters of all backgrounds, noting that Clinton is “on a first-name basis with leaders in urban communities.”
After black voters turned out overwhelmingly in favor of Obama in South Carolina, many analysts said Bill Clinton went too far in his criticisms of the Illinois senator. The former president’s comments comparing Obama’s win in the Palmetto State to the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s primary victories in 1984 and 1988 there left many scratching their heads.
Some Clinton critics have said those remarks implied that Obama’s appeal does not extend past black voters.
Since then, a number of high-profile black leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton have said the former president needs to back off. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a CBC member who has remained neutral, remarked that the former president needs to “chill.”
Rangel struck a similar tone Tuesday, when he said the former president’s emotions had gotten the better of him.
“A lot more is expected of presidents,” Rangel said, speaking to a group of business leaders at a Capitol breakfast.
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