Hillary Clinton: White people support me

May 8, 2008

By Kathy Kiely and Jill Lawrence

Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters — including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Clinton's blunt remarks about race came a day after primaries in Indiana and North Carolina dealt symbolic and mathematical blows to her White House ambitions. The Obama campaign, looking toward locking up the nomination, stepped up pressure on superdelegates who have the decisive votes in their race.

In both states, Clinton won six of 10 white voters, according to surveys of people as they left polling places.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that in Indiana, Obama split working-class voters with Clinton and won a higher percentage of white voters than in Ohio in March. He said Obama will be the strongest nominee because he appeals "to Americans from every background and all walks of life. These statements from Sen. Clinton are not true and frankly disappointing."

Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton's comment was a "poorly worded" variation on the way analysts have been "slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms."

However, he said her primary support doesn't prove she's more electable. Either Democrat will get "the vast majority" of the other's primary election votes in a general election, he said.

Clinton lost North Carolina by 15 percentage points and won Indiana by 2 points after competing full-out in both states. She had loaned the campaign $6.4 million in the past month. She said she might lend more.

"We should finish the contests we have and see where we stand after they're over," she said, referring to the six remaining primaries that will end June 3.

There were signs of unrest Wednesday, even among Clinton allies. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein wondered to The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, "whether she can get the delegates that she needs." Former South Dakota senator George McGovern, whose 1972 presidential bid gave Clinton her first political experience, switched his support from Clinton to Obama.

Source: USA Today

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Posted by Hillary · Filed Under Hillary Clinton, News, Top Story

Comments

3 Responses to “Hillary Clinton: White people support me”

Desparaged on May 8th, 2008 10:35 am

Denying reality is just so SAD. The clintons are losing any “RESPECT” they ‘may’ have had left among friends and each day they continue in this CHARADE, the more political capital the lose among their fellow politicians. There may be an even steeper price to pay and that is they will positively lose their POLITICAL FUTURES!!
Jane on May 8th, 2008 1:08 pm

Hillary Clinton is so out to lunch with this racial dividing business. She has completely no idea of the number of voters (like myself, a white voter) who haven’t voted yet and who voted republican in previous elections who are putting our full support behind Barack Obama. She may win her demographic areas, but at the end of the day, that is all she has. This is an election for a President of the United States who represents ALL American, not “white America” or “black America.” Besides, she is very naive that she doesn’t realize a lot of voters this election have gotten wise to her outsourcing thousands of US jobs overseas for her own political gain. She has very little regard for the intelligence of the average voter. That is one of the reasons why so many of her supporters have jumped off the Clintanic.
Jennifer on May 8th, 2008 5:16 pm

Apparently ENOUGH white people don’t support Hillary. Black people only make up 13% of the American population! And that’s ALL blacks, not just black voters. So while HillBillies like to complain that Barack is winning because of the black vote, they ignore the fact that had Hillary gotten the youth vote, the black vote would be wiped out!

What Hillary really meant was, “Poor white trash won’t ever support a black man, so vote for me instead.”

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Hillary Clinton: White people support me

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