After racially-charged comments, Ferraro steps down

March 12, 2008

This was the right call, and the only sensible move for Geraldine Ferraro to make.

Dear Hillary –

I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.

I won’t let that happen.

Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to make this a better world for my children and grandchildren.

You have my deep admiration and respect.

Gerry

It’s not exactly a take-responsibility moment for the former VP candidate — I was expecting, “My comments, while well-intended, have become a distraction,” not, “The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.”

Nevertheless, another battle in the “umbrage wars” has come to an end.

The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you.

I won’t let that happen.

Oh please, Geraldine. Give it a rest. You opened your mouth and said something stupid.

This is the right move, but a piss poor way to go about it, playing the victim card.

  • Some of these umbrage conflicts could easily be discussed (in a friendly fashion) at home or at a party. But it is the fact of making these subjects of discussion in public that is polarizing. It’s the discussion, not the content, that is causing the problem. Maybe later in a non-competitive environment.

  • Geraldine, STFU. Hil should stuff Bill’s dick in her mouth to keep her quiet.

  • Actually, “Gerry,” it’s progressive-thinking people who believe at a most visceral level that your racist, dog-whistling comments – designed explicitly to garner votes for your chosen candidate in Pennsylvania and elsewhere – have no place in modern, civilized discourse, are the ones who are attacking you, not the Obama campaign. Tool.

  • Clinton, Ferraro and her wider band of harpies may have actually managed to set big-scale feminism in the political world back with their embarassing displays of toadyism, sycophancy and victimology.

    Good going ladies. You’re outnumbered and outclassed.

    (And let’s not forget the contributions of the porcine, greedy consultant-enablers in her Hillaryness’s camp, too.)

  • She has absolutely no integrity.

    She admits that she was a “token” women on the ballot with Mondale and was not qualified. Then why would she run if she was not qualified? She finds it OK to decieve everyone? She’s prepared to undermine all women who run for high office?

    A disgusting person. She and Hillary (who did not ask for her resignation) will hand the presidency to McCain.

  • That doesn’t sound like it’s coming to an end. It sounds instead like the beginning of a long series of “independent” TV ads slamming Obama, from ACCABBB (“American Citizens Concerned About Obama Being Black”) or some such, Treasurer & CEO, G. Ferraro.

  • It’s all part of the game. Now she looks like a victim of the PC Speech police rather than a racist hack.

  • Why expect her to show class in the resignation when she hasn’t shown any with her previous statements? This just extends the controversy another news cycle.

  • Ferraro’s dog-whistle message about Obama is intended to win votes for Hillary in Pennsylvania. Ferraro is not doing this on her own. This is all planned. Her message is the old racist cant of “perferential treatment” for blacks in hiring, college, etc. It is an appeal to blue collar white voters in Pennsylvania, a reminder to help them remember their resentments towards blacks who succeed. Somehow some whites feel that the only way a black person could ever succeed would be if he/she were given preferential treatment. This message coming out of the Clinton campaign is meant to inflame lower and middle income whites. And they will succeed.

  • Hey Steve,

    you may want to take another look at all the racial crap that you’ve given hillary the benefit of the doubt on.

  • Saying she has resigned from the HRC campaign is like saying an artillery shell has resigned from the Army after it’s been fired.

    She’s caused the damage that she was designed to do, and her utility now is gone. Besides, I’m sure HRC’s campaign has plenty more shells left where that one came from.

  • She should also thank the Hillary Clinton campaign engineers for writing such a fake sounding letter to sign her name for the ‘last stage’ of this concocted scenario. Let this precontrived script play out to the last scene! 🙂 The tone of the letter reads like something written by an unemployed Hollywood hack script writer for a bad B movie and I would bet that Ferraro didn’t even write it nor did any of her people.

    This shallow concocted incident by the Hillary Clinton campaign is a sad, but ubiquitously common ‘business as usual’ statement on ‘standard ops’ for American hard ball politics.


  • “I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself”

    So I guess this means she’ll be joining Freedoms Watch. In other words, expect more of the same.

  • I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

    Shorter: “Now you will have plausible deniability while I play the dogwhistle for you.”

    She already did the job. The bozos and bimbos are sitting back nodding to themselves about “those awful people” coming in and taking their jobs

    Someone is dumb enough to think that something changed for the better here? They should have kicked her out after the first one, but she goes on and does it three more times, and now promises to “keep on keeping on.”

    “Consider a Congressman, then consider an idiot; ah, but I repeat myself.”

  • It’s really sad that we can’t seem to have a campaign based on issues , but instead
    based on race, and It’s even more sad that Geraldine Ferraro doesn’t even realize that what she said was hurtful not only to the Obama campaign but to American in general. Her recent statement about the Obama campaign is picking on her because she is white should let her know how it feels to be judge based on someone race. It’s not the fact that he’s black it’s the message that he is speaking on that has proven to be successful.

  • She’ll have way more free time to get the “truth” out on FOX News now that she doesn’t have that pesky finance committee obligation to tie up her schedule…

  • Geraldine, you are an old, crusty bigot. Now that you’re no longer affiliated with the Hillary campaign, tell us how you really feel. Bring it on G!

  • “Big, bad, black ‘Bama is ganging up on us poor, helpless, innocent white girls”… Way to go, whiny- Dinie (“Gerry” is far too masculine a nickname for you, dear); makes you look such a wimp on top of being a racist. Don’t let the door hit ya, where the good Lord split ya…

    I wonder if anyone has Powers’ resignation letter or speech for comparison purposes.

  • Obama is just as much a white guy as a black guy. He was raised by his white mother and white grandparents. His black foreign father and step-father were not around by his teenage years.

  • “Ding dong, the Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch! Ding dong, the Wicked Witch is deeeeeaaaaaddddd……”

    The all-time champion on the Munchkin Top 100 Hits list. And I don’t care if breaks the Snark-O-Meter, if the ruby slipper fits, wear it.

  • The HRC campaign was a pathetic flop. No one seemed to believe in her candidacy. Many, like Sen. Kerry & Kennedy, were anxious to defect, asap. Hillary was left with sloppy money grabbers and D-listers like Ferraro [sigh].

    So Democrats take complete control in ’09. But won’t that be a dud too?

    -Single-payer universal healthcare or subsidized insurance premiums?
    Hint: Obama’s for subsidized insurance premiums.

    -Instead of spending $12 bil. a month in Iraq, how about $1 billion a month to buy-up guns in America. And then register & “well regulate” what’s left?

    -Instead of Obamas [throw away] proposal to spend $15 billion a year on ‘green’ energy, how about setting a timeline to phase out coal?

    -Instead of passing more ineffective campaign finance reform laws, how about publicly financed elections?

    -Along with higher taxes on the rich, what about taxing imports high enough to force a repatriation of our manufacturing base?

    -Legalization of marijuana, or leave it to the states?

    Obama say’s he needs voter support so he can take on the lobbyist. But his agenda is NOT revolutionary. How can his inexperience plus a default position of pledgeing to work with others in Washington, bring real change? Like Clinton, Gore & Bush, when Obama leaves the White House won’t he be looking to ca$h in too? On the plus side he’s young, strong, intelligent, dedicated and probably see’s himself as being relatively uncorrupted.

  • Allen:

    Hey Steve, you may want to take another look at all the racial crap that you’ve given hillary the benefit of the doubt on.

    I think he is reluctant to go full steam there–, and I understand why. Have you noticed that Josh Marshall, Kevin Drum and Steve Benen all pretty much took the same route on this one? Basically they marginalized the ideas coming out of Ferraro’s mouth as being flatly and factually wrong. That’s fair. And in Josh’s case, with his new post up: Send in the Clown he is now attempting to marginalize Ferraro as a sort of court jester. Presenting her as an outlier-freak who comes in, does a parody dance, and then is dismissed to a round of guffaws.

    Maybe so. Or… maybe not so.
    Is she really an outlier? Or is she an actual data point that represents quite a few aging white democrats? Trying to fit her in motley and trivialize her, misses this deeper current. Debunking her ideas with reason is a both necessary and noble; but, in the end I suspect, there is heavy need for an emotional response too.

    I am turning to Keith tonight in hopes of that.
    Good golly. Somebody with a microphone has to stand up and rant at the machine that has enabled this limo liberal to rain racism down on us for days….

    Note:

    Limo liberal? Yes read this all the way through to the end. Amazing stuff:
    http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9810,212225,143,1.html

  • Whatever. One less bigot officially affiliated with the Clinton campaign.

    Remember the Automat? You take out a piece of pie, another piece of pie replaces it. Expect the same principle to apply here. We’ve got nearly six weeks of Clinton-surrogate nastiness to go.

  • Here’s what Dr. Laura had to say about Spitzer:

    VIEIRA: Do you think women play any role in this, Dr. Laura?

    SCHLESSINGER: It’s interesting. what you said about what men need — men do need validation. When they come into the world they’re born of a woman. Getting the validation from mommy is the beginning of needing it from a woman. When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like our hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need.

    VIEIRA: Are you saying women should feel guilty, like they somehow drove the man to cheat?

    SCHLESSINGER: You know what, the cheating was his decision to repair what’s damaged, and to feed himself where he’s starving. But, yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.

  • Is Doubtful your teen-aged daughter? Just wondering. -Partial

    Oh boy, I’ve hit the big time, folks. My own personal troll!

    Thanks for the relevant and insightful comment!

  • As Kevin Drum points out, Ferraro’s remarks were made to a reporter for a local Torrance, CA newspaper with a circulation of 60,000 in a state that has already had its primary. No one heard about the remark until Daily Kos starting complaining about it. Kos is for Obama, not Clinton. If Ferraro were actually doing any dirty work for Clinton, she wouldn’t do it in that manner. Kos however is doing dirty work for Obama by attacking Ferraro and by perpetuating something that otherwise wouldn’t have been on anyone’s radar. Ferraro herself says that the meaning was twisted and that she was not being critical of Obama. Regardless, this is clearly an attack against Clinton’s campaign by Obama’s supporters. It won’t die because they don’t want it to.

  • Mary,

    You may not be aware of this but she’s already made these comments on John Gibson’s syndicated talk show about 2 weeks ago. So there is a considerable pattern here, and with here regular role on Fox I’m sure that it was going to get worse. As well, I’m sure that you were against the Clinton campaign for politicizing the Samantha Powers remarks since they were in a Scottish paper.

  • Mary,

    Power’s remarks were made in a foreign country that had nothing to do with the primary at all, but that didn’t temper the Clinton campaign’s outrage. Clearly Ferraro said something stupid and she’s paid the price for it. It would be nice if she’d be contrite, but absent that her resignation is enough for this particular Obama supporter.

    As long as she keeps her mouth shut, as far as I’m concerned, this is a closed issue.

  • (This is why I’m really, really glad I started using my last initial as part of my handle here 🙂

    And yeah, Ferraro was tossing out this whine in various venues. The intertubes makes sure that even an interview in a wee little paper gets out sooner or later.

  • What kind of resignation letter is that? Even for a hack politician adept at apologizing because they have to, but not because they felt like they did something wrong, that is terrible.

    Does it make anyone else feel used? I mean, consider all that time that the “vast right wing conspiracy” was telling us all how evil the Clintons were. Man, it hurts to admit that a guy like Limbaugh was right all along.

  • I just heard Keith’s Special Comment. As always, wonderful. If any of you haven’t yet, tune in the re-broadcast. I’m old enough to have heard Ed Murrow live, and at one time questioned Keith’s use of the famous ‘Good Night and Good Luck” ending. No more. He is the reincarnation of Murrow.

    My question to all of you — it isn’t worth discussing the slime of Ferraro now — is

    which of these positions would Keith be more suited for
    a) his current one
    b) Hillary’s successor — after a primary fight — in 2012
    c) Obama’s Vice President

  • Every time Keith Olbermann makes one of his special comments I find myself breaking into spontaneous applause.

    Two things I haven’t seen mentioned (though I admit I’ve only read about a quarter of the Obama v. Clinton comments):

    Every time a Clinton surrogate brings up “the party of Jesse Jackson”, racial quotas or any other racially-tinged issue, they make it acceptable for McCain and the Republicans to use the same attacks in the fall.

    And as Olbermann said, whether it’s true or not, the perception among many African-Americans is that the Clinton campaign is engaged in subtle race-baiting. Forget about big states vs. little states, does anyone out there think Clinton could win in the fall without the African-American vote? Does anyone a believe huge portion of African-Americans won’t stay home in November if they think Obama got screwed out of the Democratic nomination by a back room deal by the white powers-that-be?

  • The real reason dinosaurs went extinct. Time passed them by.

    Geraldine Ferraro and Bill Buckley both came of age when you could say shit like that in polite company and it was considered — polite.

    I sincerely hope that we have seen the last of Geraldine Ferraro in public life.

    By the way, it seems to me that Barrack Obama has accomplished at least as much as John Kennedy had before the later became President. Or Bill Clinton. So her argument is false on its face, not that she cared, she is just doing Hillary’s filthy work for her and is trying to take as many down with her as she can.

    Geraldine Ferraro is, in short, a political suicide bomber.

  • The right call? Playing victim after her racist remarks?

    Nah. Again my only question is how Clinton can survive a NY senate race without the African-American vote. Perhaps they’re as unimportant there as we are to her nationally.

  • Surely there’s a racist politician in the South somewhere who needs an over-the-hill, aging secretary?

  • nd as Olbermann said, whether it’s true or not, the perception among many African-Americans is that the Clinton campaign is engaged in subtle race-baiting. Forget about big states vs. little states, does anyone out there think Clinton could win in the fall without the African-American vote? Does anyone a believe huge portion of African-Americans won’t stay home in November if they think Obama got screwed out of the Democratic nomination by a back room deal by the white powers-that-be?

    ive got a lot of respect for steve b, kevin drum, et al, but anyone still willing to hedge and say, ‘maybe its just a bunch of ill-conceived statements and misunderstandings” needs to seriously take his/her head out of his/her respective ass and wake the f*** up.

  • To repeat something I wrote in another thread here. if experience counts, wouldn’t you love a candidate who had been
    a Congressman for ten years
    a Senator for ten years
    Ambassador both to Russia and to England
    Secretary of State
    and who was also nominated to the Supreme Court — though he refused the nomination.

    An ideal president, right?

    The man I am speaking about was James Buchanan, universally ranked as one of the real disasters in the White House.

    On the other hand, who’d want someone who was a one-term Congressman, defeated Senatorial candidate, and who spent the rest of his precampaign life as a lawyer?

    Like Buchanan’s successor.

    (For those who are especially ignorant of history, the guy’s name was Lincoln.)

  • Even Olberman finally gets it. We’ve been telling you moonbats that the Clintons are scumbags for years but now this media whore says it and you agree.

  • It is unbelievable that one of the remnants of this campaign will be the irreprarable damage the Clintons and Ferraro have done to their legacies. None of them will ever be seen the same again and not for the better. Amazing.

  • Thank you , thank you, thank you, Geraldine!!! The Obama campaign has been waiting so desperately for someone to place the race card. Geraldine did not play a race card. I think this hurts the Obama campaign. They were actually salivating and drooling that a comment about race was mentioned. That is Obama’s ace in the hole. No one can complain or they are called a racist. BS

  • 48. Jeff Farias said: Even Olberman finally gets it. We’ve been telling you moonbats that the Clintons are scumbags for years but now this media whore says it and you agree.

    Trouble is your evidence was mostly made up and wingnuts generally don’t seem to have any moral compunction against lying so there is no reason to trust anything they say.

  • MaryL, I’m glad you’re using the first initial of your last name too. Better yet, why not pick a name that is entirely unconfusable with mine, such as ObamaSupporter2,999,999?

  • It wasn’t a racist campaign until someone in their blind partisanship, screamed “racist.” Now it is seen as that and nothing can change it. Sad.

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