Talking about anger over the Hillary campaign's claim that only votes of the white blue collar matter and the African American votes do not. This happened today. Yesterday's episode was a different one. Get Clyburn mad, and a lot could happen. Will not be surprised if the DNC leadership is behind him and has given the OK to go public with this warning.
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Clyburn Warns Democratic Party: African Americans Matter
By Jonathan Weisman
South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn warned today that if the heated Clinton-Obama contest continues on its present course it could have dire consequences for African American support of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, should she win the Democratic nomination, and on African American faith in the Democratic Party even if she does not.
"I may not know a lot about what drives some voters, but I know a little bit about African American voters," he said, in an interview with The Trail. "And if they feel as if they're being used, they'll stay away. They just won't engage in the process."
"African Americans are really engaged in the process and I don't think we oughta be saying anything that might discourage these people or in any way marginalize them," he continued. "I am very concerned that if we keep talking as if it doesn't matter ... that Obama gets 92 percent of the black vote ... since he only got 35 percent of the white vote, he's in trouble. Well, Hillary Clinton only got 8 percent of black vote. [That's] like saying that 92 percent, they don't matter."
His remarks come a day after telling the New York Times that Bill Clinton's "bizarre" conduct and statements -- such as comparing Sen. Barack Obama with Rev. Jesse Jackson after his South Carolina primary win -- had incensed African American voters and threatened to create a permanent rift between the Clintons and African Americans. Clyburn, the most senior African American in Congress and the third-ranking Democrat in the House, today said he was also disturbed by the vast quantity of press coverage focused on Obama's relationship to white voters, which he felt minimized the significance of African American voter choices. "I think that the way everybody has been reporting this Pennsylvania thing, it's almost saying black people don't matter. Only thing that matters is how white people respond. And that's what bothered me. I think I matter."
"I'm speaking on behalf of African American voters all across this country, many of whom I've talked to," he said. "When I'm having young college students coming up to me and telling me how they don't understand how I and other black political leaders allow black community to be so trivialized. One lady wrote me a letter saying, 'What is it about you that allows you to take this from Bill Clinton?'
"This is not about who is the nominee. It is about what kind of position our party is gonna be in whenever we get a nominee." |
