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WASHINGTON: The gloves are coming off in the bruising White House
battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as a race row
engulfs the campaigns before their first electoral clash in the Deep
South.
Sunday saw some of the bitterest
exchanges yet between the candidates, with the Democratic nomination
finely poised heading into contests in the western state of Nevada
and South Carolina.
Clinton has sought to temper
Obama’s electrifying oratory with a down-to-earth appeal that her
hard-won experience means she is best qualified to take on the
Republicans in November’s presidential election.
As an example, she said a week
ago that the civil rights dream of Martin Luther King only became
reality under legislation enacted by president Lyndon Johnson.
Cue a furious row as
African-American leaders, including some South Carolina
powerbrokers, accused the New York senator of devaluing the revered
King’s contribution to the civil rights battles of the 1960s.
Clinton said she had fought her
“entire life” for civil rights, emphasized that King remained a
hero to her, and accused the Obama campaign of “an unfair and
unwarranted attempt” to malign her.
The row could well resonate in
South Carolina, which holds its Democratic primary on January 26 and
has a large African-American community. The state is notorious for
its bare-knuckle politics.
Sen. John McCain, after beating
George W. Bush in the New Hampshire Republican primary of 2000, ran
into a barrage of false rumors in South Carolina that he had
fathered an illegitimate black child.
The rumors did McCain no favors
among the staunchly conservative white voters of the former
slave-holding state, and Bush went on to take South Carolina and the
presidency.
--AFP
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