Obama Camp's Memo on Clintons' Politicizing Race

[ElsewheresDaughter]

I think the unacceptable tactics from Obama were having MSM run with their strategy is just dirty.


Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign has prepared a detailed memo listing various instances in which it perceived Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign to have deliberately played the race card in the Democratic primary.

The memo, which was obtained by the Huffington Post and has been made public elsewhere, is believed to have been given to an activist and contains mostly excerpts from different media reports. It lists the contact info and name of Obama's South Carolina press secretary, Amaya Smith, and is broken down into five incidents in which either Clinton, her husband Bill, or campaign surrogates made comments that could be interpreted as racially insensitive.

The document provides an indication that, in private, the Obama campaign is seeking to capitalize on the view - and push the narrative - that the Clintons are using race-related issues for political leverage. In public, the Obama campaign has denied that they are trying to propagate such a perception, noting that the document never was sent to the press.

But irrespective of the memo, the image of the Clinton campaign sowing racial discord did bubble to the surface following a series of comments made this past week. On Friday, Bill Clinton called into multiple African American radio shows, including one hosted by Al Sharpton, to tamp down backlash against him for calling Obama's candidacy a "fairy tale."

In the memo, the Obama campaign highlights these "fairy tale" remarks and notes that Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager, "lashed into Bill Clinton" for them. The Clinton campaignhas said that the former president was referring to Obama's position on the Iraq. And indeed, Clinton made his remarks in the context of discussing criticism of the war.

"It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year," said Clinton, "and never got asked one time, not once, 'Well, how could you say, that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your website in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since?' Give me a break.

"This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen..."

Other incidents cited in the Obama memo include remarks made by Sen. Clinton, that, in regards to civil rights legislation, "It took a president to get it done"; and comments made by Clinton supporter and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that, "you can't shuck and jive at a press conference." In the memo, the Obama campaign says Cuomo was referring to the Illinois senator. Cuomo's spokesperson Jeffrey Lerner has argued that Cuomo was "clearly saying that Iowa and New Hampshire were important primaries because the candidates could not duck the tough questions."

read the rest here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/12/obama-camps-memo-on-clin_n_81205.html