Reply #41: Ferraro wrote a letter that was in this week's Newweek [View All]

[ErinBerin84]

This is like the third time that Ferraro has written in to Newsweek, I swear.

"Ellis Cose says that there has been an 'unending stream of race-baiting silliness emanating from people with strong opinions about candidacy ("It Was Always Headed Here", March 3rd). Every time anyone says anything that the Obama campaign thinks hurts him politically, they place the race card. Cose makes my point when he says that I am 'famous largely because she was once selected to run for vice president." If my name were Gerard and not Geraldine, I would never have been the nominee in 1984. Does Cose believe that if Obama were a white man with limited legislative experience, he could have raised the money he did and survived a primary against John Edwards? In a June 5th 2003, Chicago Tribune article after Obama was elected to Senate, he said the same thing beginning with the phrase "if I were white". There is nothing racist in my comment about Obama. Yet his campaign irresponsibly seized on it in an attempt to hit Hillary."
-- Geraldine A. Ferraro
New York, NY


This is funny, because it's not as if Ferraro was making just any criticism of the campaign, and people cried racism. She said that Obama's position as the leader in the campaign was largely due to the fact that he is African American. I'm not sure which Chicago Tribune article she speaks of, but doesn't she realize that when SHE keeps talking about this, she is not helping Hillary either? The comment may not have been "racist", but it was pretty freaking racially insensitive. And why is the 'John Edwards' card pulled all of the time in this equation, as if he and Barack Obama were interchangeable. While I do think that Edwards kind of got screwed in the sense that the media's fascination with Hillary and Barack, and their "historical candidacies" unfairly overshadowed him, I don't think that we can blame that on Barack Obama being African American. The best comment I heard on this arguement was on Face the Nation (I forget by who)-"Maybe the message of Obama's One America just resonated better with people than Edward's message of "Two Americas".