Hillary surrogate invokes MLK
Posted: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 7:00 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Carrie Dann
HIGHLAND HILLS, OH -- In the wake of criticism that his involvement in the presidential race has hurt his wife's campaign, President Bill Clinton campaigned in Ohio tonight with a message refocused on his wife's decision-making experience. Although the back-and-forth between Hillary Clinton and her main rival did not creep into the former president's remarks, the issue of race came up before Clinton even took the stage. He was introduced by Clinton endorser and popular local black representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who told a cheering and racially diverse crowd that Martin Luther King would have been proud of Clinton's candidacy.
"I am supporting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and I owe Martin Luther King Jr. too," said Tubbs Jones, a African-American congresswoman popular in her Cleveland-area district here. "Martin Luther King said 'Judge, you, by the content of your character, and not by the color of your skin.' And if he was here, and if he was here, he would say 'I'm happy that there's a woman running for president too.'"
She went on to take a swipe at Obama's focus on hope as the centerpiece of his candidacy. "You need to know hope did not begin in 2008," she said. "Hope began in 2002 when the man from Hope, Arkansas, ran for president and made a difference in the United States of America." (She meant 1992, when Clinton first began his presidential bid. The slip, perhaps, provides some evidence of the fieriness of her comments.)
When the time came for his own remarks, Clinton stayed away from the contentious issues that have dominated chatter about the race since the run up to South Carolina. Outlining his wife's strategies to tackle education, the economy, and trade, Clinton emphasized she has "the broadest, deepest record" of the three candidates still in the race.
(RNC oppo types may salivate over a few of Clinton's lines that point towards possible short-term tax hikes for long-term hikes. He said that his wife will "spend whatever it takes to put 100-mile-a-gallon cars in your reach quickly." And on her plan to repair the impending housing crisis by giving states and cities extra cash to negotiate with mortgage companies, he admitted "That will cost you some money, probably about 30 billion dollars," he said. But he emphasized that such an early bailout would save billions of dollars and thousands of families' homes.)
Clinton's visit to Ohio, an important Super Tuesday state, comes days after his wife's defeat in South Carolina. In her introduction, Tubbs Jones downplayed Obama's win in the Palmetto State Carolina, where his overwhelming support from African-Americans was largely credited for his victory. "I congratulate Senator Obama for winning south Carolina, but we got 22 other states to make. And we're gonna take this election right on to the people and win the rest of them."
