Prometheus 6

It is not Geraldine Ferraro's era of politics. She was the bright star in 1984 when Walter Mondale asked her to be his running mate, and the pair went on to lose 49 states to Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Ferraro has said if her name was Gerard instead of Geraldine, she never would have been given that opportunity. Of all the Americans who want to see a woman sworn in as president, Ferraro might be one of the most eager. Now that Hillary Clinton has a chance to become the Democratic nominee, Ferraro has said she gets emotional at the prospect. She doesn't want Barack Obama to ruin her thrill....

Georgetown law professor Emma Coleman Jordan, an Obama supporter who sat on the fence for a long time because she so admired Hillary Clinton, sees the Ferraro episode as "part of a systematic project" to raise Obama's negatives. "It is so sad that we've come to this," she said, "that a Democratic Party liberal [Clinton] has chosen to pick up the dirtiest tool in the political box to win. I'm sad. You can put that in a quote. But it's no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that this string of events is not an accident."

Race Tangled in the Race
Geraldine Ferraro's Pointed Campaign Discourse
By Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 14, 2008; C01

The debate about racial preference vs. equal opportunity has coursed through society for decades, and not smoothly. We've argued passionately about who gets admitted to college and why, who gets a job promotion and why, which company gets awarded a contract and why.

But affirmative action in pursuit of the presidency? Now, that's a new one.

Geraldine Ferraro, the former congresswoman who once drew large, ecstatic crowds as the first woman on a major party's presidential ticket, is pioneering new ground: She has suggested that Barack Obama is leading the Democratic presidential race because he is black. Given that Ferraro is a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and something of a Democratic elder stateswoman, this assertion blew up on the campaign trail like an exploding oil tanker. Charges and countercharges -- of insensitivity, racism, race-baiting, race-carding, sinister calculation and thin-skinnedness -- flew back and forth between the two camps and ricocheted across the landscape.

Ferraro, 72 and feisty as ever, finally had enough and fell on her sword, sort of. She quit Clinton's finance committee, saying she wished to do her friend no harm. But she took back nothing. In fact, Ferraro has been on a multi-interview tear the past several days, blaming the Obama campaign for spreading the controversy and causing all the trouble. "I personally think that this is the last time that the Obama campaign is going to be able to play this type of race card," she said on "NBC Nightly News," "because I think that's what it is. I really do."

She then suggested that she was the one owed an apology for being implicated as "a racist," though it appears that no one in the Obama campaign actually called her one.

"The truth is, I think that most people want to put this behind us and not turn up the heat on what already has been a pretty unfortunate situation," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said yesterday. "No one on this campaign has ever accused her of being a racist. That is just completely ludicrous. I wish her well."

Some Obama supporters, however, cited what they described as other insidious comments -- some racially tinged, some not -- by Clinton surrogates such as New Hampshire Democratic power broker Billy Shaheen, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, businessman Bob Johnson, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and even Bill Clinton himself.

Georgetown law professor Emma Coleman Jordan, an Obama supporter who sat on the fence for a long time because she so admired Hillary Clinton, sees the Ferraro episode as "part of a systematic project" to raise Obama's negatives. "It is so sad that we've come to this," she said, "that a Democratic Party liberal [Clinton] has chosen to pick up the dirtiest tool in the political box to win. I'm sad. You can put that in a quote. But it's no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that this string of events is not an accident."