Clinton backers call for Power's head
Posted: Friday, March 07, 2008 11:47 AM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
Clinton backers in Congress called on Obama to fire his top foreign policy advisor for calling Clinton a "monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper.
"Personal attacks are not the way to convince voters you're capable of being the president of the United States," said Nita Lowey (D-NY), adding this should be a civil contest, and that they were calling on Sen. Obama to make it very clear Samantha Power should not be part of this campaign. She called this a test for Obama.
"Sen. Obama needs to stand up and take some action," said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY).
Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) said Obama had set a tone for this campaign and had talked about the politics of hope throughout, so it should not degenerate into "name calling," which she said was the result of frustration and anger from his losses Tuesday. She called it "below the belt" and "out of bounds."
The team on the call, including spokesmen Howard Wolfson and Phil Singer, were challenged on similar negative comments and suggestions made by Clinton backers and surrogates like Bob Johnson, Billy Shaheen and others, noting it took the campaign several days to respond in the case of Johnson.
