Obama is doing a pre-emtive strike on Republicans. He assumes that Republicans will create fear by playing the race card. It seems strange to me that Obama would bring up race before anyone else does. Bringing up race is what got Geraldine Ferraro into trouble isn't it?

Here's Ferraro's comment:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.

Here's Obama's comment:

"We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid.

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

Regardless of whether or not Republicans go after Obama using his race, IMO, it's not wise for Obama to accuse someone in advance.  It really is nothing more than an assumption on Obama's part. I'm surprised Obama would make a pre-emptive accusation like this, especially since many have claimed Obama trancends race.

Geraldine Ferraro Praises Barack Obama In a Speech Yesterday

RENO - Ex-Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro praised the Nevada Women's Fund on Tuesday for using their resources to help young women overcome adversity in the same way Barack Obama beat long odds to become his party's presidential nominee.

"I want a fairer country for women and girls - black, white, yellow or brown, I don't care what color. And I'm not going to stop pushing. You women are empowered to help make that happen," Ferraro told about 1,000 people at the nonprofit group's 17th annual "Salute to Women of Achievement."

"Last year at this time, when Sen. Obama announced for the presidency, people white and black alike said, 'You can't do it. This country is not ready for a black man to be nominated president of the United States,"'she said.

"Well, he said, 'Yes, we can.' And he didn't wait for someone to give it to him, he worked hard and he earned the nomination," said the former New York congresswoman, who became the first woman on a major party's presidential ticket as Walter Mondale's running mate in 1984.

"And now today, the Nevada Women's Fund and your honorees' devotion to fairness, you are also saying, 'Yes, we can.' And I have no doubt that together, we will be successful."

I'm tired of Gerry Ferraro and her ignorant rants and since March I have decided that I would just ignore her but today her editorial in the Boston Globe just set me off.

Let's take a look at what she had to say.

Here we are at the end of the primary season, and the effects of racism and sexism on the campaign have resulted in a split within the Democratic Party that will not be easy to heal before election day. Perhaps it's because neither the Barack Obama campaign nor the media seem to understand what is at the heart of the anger on the part of women who feel that Hillary Clinton was treated unfairly because she is a woman or what is fueling the concern of Reagan Democrats for whom sexism isn't an issue, but reverse racism is.

I will admit that there has been sexism on the part of the media as well as racism.  I think most of us can all agree on that. However, to blame the Obama campaign is just ridiculous. Why is it that Clinton supporters cannot name a specific example of sexism during this primary that is Obama's fault? If someone is willing to give me an example of Obama being sexist and not the media then I am more than willing to listen. It is understandable that Hillary's supporters are furious at the media for how she has been treated but to blame everything that the media has done on Obama is absurd.  

Gerry tries to explain Reagan Dems to us:

They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white. It's not racism that is driving them, it's racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don't believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory "Our Time Has Come" they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

What on earth is she talking about? How is "our time has come" meaning that Obama is leaving white people behind?  Is she trying to say that these voters feel like a black man is going to take over the country and leave all the white folks behind? Has Barack  Obama ever signaled or even said that he is going to lock white people up so that blacks can rule the country? Has she forgotten that he is HALF white himself?  Does Gerry really believe this nonsense?

Gerry closes out by basically calling Obama an uppity black man:

They don't identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they're not stupid.

In case  anyone didn't notice, Hillary Clinton went to Wellesley and graduated from Yale law school. She and Bill are now worth over $100 million dollars.  The Obama's, because of his book deal and their house are worth about $4 million and they just finished paying their student loans off from law school. For the record, Obama's mother was on food stamps. Yes, food stamps and he went to school on scholarships. What Gerry Ferraro is saying is what many of us felt about some of these so-called Reagan Dems--they will under no circumstance vote for a black man no matter what he does or say. Geraldine has also made it clear that she won't either. No one should be surprised as she has actively campaigned against black Democrats in New York in the past.   I understand being angry that Hillary lost I would be too if my candidate lost but I would get over it and vote Democrat because the democratic party cares about the issues that are important to me in this election.  

I know many Hillary Clinton supporters who would strongly disagree with this crap and for Gerry to continue on her "insult everyone who doesn't support Hillary" tour is disgraceful and not helpful. Gerry Ferraro is bitter because a woman did not win. She should be bitter at Mark Penn who ran Hillary's campaign into the ground and not Obama. Obama didn't win because of sexism against Hillary, he won because he knew the rules and planned accordingly.  He also won despite 20% of voters in Kentucky and West Virginia stating that race was an important factor and they voted overwhelmingly for Hillary.  

Hillary came into this primary with every possible advantage. She had over 100 super delegates, money, name recognition, and the support of the most popular Democrat in the country. She squandered it all. Was it sexist when the media called Hillary the inevitable democratic nominee eight months ago?  Where was Gerry then? We only started hearing of the cries of sexism from Gerry when it was clear after the primaries in February that Hillary's chances of becoming the nominee were dwindling fast.  

If Gerry wants to continue down this shameful path it is time for her to leave the party. I'm sure that the GOP will be waiting with open arms for her.

So, letmegetthisstraight Geraldine...

Ferraro, who clashed with the Obama campaign about whether she made a racially offensive remark, said she might not either. "I think Obama was terribly sexist," she said.

Back in March, Geraldine Ferraro said the following:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," she said.

Since everyone else around here has fun using the bold command to make a point, I figured I'd do the same.  You see, she wasn't saying that being black in America is generally a good thing, or that Barack Obama could not possibly be smart enough to be President.  What she said was that the reasons he is getting so many votes is that black people will vote for him in droves because he is black and they want one of their own to be POTUS for a change, while white people will vote for him in droves because they think that by doing so, they are erasing negative American history towards African Americans, showing that they are not racist, and showing the world what a wonderful country America is.  I used to be one of those people, and was going to vote for Obama over Clinton, before I came to my senses and realized that you don't elect a particular individual to a specific office based on such generalities, and that it is best to elect the most qualified for the job.  After watching the debates, it became clear to me that Hillary is more qualified at this particular point in time than Barack.

Cross posted at No Quarter

Yesterday former Democratic nominee and Obama supporter John Kerry confirmed everything that Geraldine Ferraro said. Not only that, he took it a few steps further, In an interview with the New Bedford Standard Times Senator Kerry stated that:

the color of Obama's skin makes him uniquely qualified for president and even reach out to the moderate Islam world.

Please take note that John Kerry used the phrase the color of Obama's skin makes him uniquely qualified for president.

Now excuse me if I belabor the point but didn't Geraldine Ferraro say basically the exact same thing when she stated:

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said today that she objected to the comparison Sen. Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations Tuesday.

In the speech, Obama sought to place the inflammatory remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a broader context, in part by placing them on a continuum with Ferraro's recent remark to the Daily Breeze that Obama is "lucky" to be black.

"To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable," Ferraro said today. "He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred."Ferraro, the only woman to ever run on a major party presidential ticket, sparked a controversy when she told the Breeze that "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." The resulting controversy was quickly superceded by an even greater furor over Wright's sermons, in which Obama's longtime pastor denounced America and argued that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy.

In an effort to stem the damage to his presidential campaign, Obama gave a 37-minute speech Tuesday in which he used Ferraro's remarks as a rhetorical foil to Wright's and drew a parallel between black anger and white resentment.
"On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wild- and wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap," Obama said.

"On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation and that rightly offend white and black alike."

Ferraro, who supports Sen. Hillary Clinton, has been unapologetic about her remarks. Clinton has said she disagrees with Ferraro and has accepted Ferraro's resignation from her finance committee.

Ferraro said she had "no clue" why Obama would include her in his speech, and said Obama's association with Wright raises serious questions about his judgment.

"What this man is doing is he is spewing that stuff out to young people, and to younger people than Obama, and putting it in their heads that it's OK to say `Goddamn America' and it's OK to beat up on white people," she said. "You don't preach that from the pulpit."

Ferraro also said she could not understand why Obama had called out his own white grandmother for using racial stereotypes that had made him cringe.

"I could not believe that," she said. "That's my mother's generation."

Obama returned to Ferraro's remarks later in his speech, again drawing a comparison between her and Wright.

"We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro in the aftermath of her recent statements as harboring some deep-seated bias," Obama said.

He went on to argue that such dismissals would foreclose a deeper understanding of racial resentments.

Obama appeared to allude to Ferraro once more when he said that it would be wrong to "pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card."

It was Obama's campaign that drew the most attention to Ferraro's remark last week, and suggested they fit with an pattern of racial comments by Clinton surrogates.

"That's exactly what he did," Ferraro said. "It was their campaign that started this."

In sum, however, Ferraro said she thought the speech was "excellent," and said she understood why Obama could not renounce his association with Wright.

"I think they got as far as they could go politically," she said. "They're looking at their base. Their base is African-Americans. They're looking at that and they're trying to walk a very thin line. They don't want to offend the African-Americans, and this is the way he did it."

     For the first time in American history being a black man is now an asset? Ok, for the first time outside of an athletic event being a black man is a plus. I have been black a long time and I have witnessed countless instances when being a black man has been a handicap of epic proportions. I can even attest to the fact that just having a "black sounding" name has been a detriment. Now, I am suppose to believe that being a black man is somehow the reason Barack Obama is leading the nomination for President of America? I wonder if the people who are saying this line even hear themselves. I would like for them to go and tell this to the many young black men that are incarcerated in our nations jails and prisons who won't even get the opportunity to vote in this historic election or tell it to the many young black men who are unemployed standing around the corners of our inner cities.