Clinton's tepid response to Ferraro is shameful

Apart from all that?

Well. It sounds as if those advisers want their campaign to be associated with those words, and the cheap, ignorant, vile racism that underlies every syllable.

And Geraldine Ferraro has just gone free-lance.

Sen. Clinton:This is not a campaign strategy. This is a suicide pact.

This week alone, your so-called strategists have declared that Sen. Obama has not yet crossed the “commander-in-chief threshold.”

But he might be your choice to be vice president, even though a quarter of the previous sixteen vice presidents have become commander-in-chief during the greatest kind of crisis this nation can face: a mid-term succession.

But you’d only pick him if he crosses that threshold by the time of the convention.

But if he does cross that threshold by the time of the convention, he will only have done so sufficiently enough to become vice president, not president.

Senator, if the serpentine logic of your so-called advisers were not bad enough ...

Now, thanks to Geraldine Ferraro, and your campaign’s initial refusal to break with her, and your new relationship with her, now more disturbing still is her claim that she can now “speak for herself” about her vision of Sen. Obama as some kind of embodiment of a quota.

If you were to seek Obama as a vice president, it would be, to Ms. Ferraro, some kind of social engineering gesture, some kind of racial make-good.

Do you not see, Senator?

To Sen. Clinton’s supporters, to her admirers, to her friends for whom she is first choice, and to her friends for whom she is second choice, she is still letting herself be perceived as standing next to, and standing by, racial divisiveness and blindness.

And worst yet, after what President Clinton said during the South Carolina primary, comparing the Obama and Jesse Jackson campaigns; a disturbing, but only borderline remark.

After what some in the black community have perceived as a racial undertone to the “3 A.M.” ad, a disturbing but only borderline interpretation ...

And after that moment’s hesitation in her own answer on 60 Minutes about Obama’s religion; a disturbing, but only borderline vagueness ...

After those precedents, there are those who see a pattern, false or true.

After those precedents, there are those who see an intent, false or true.

After those precedents, there are those who see the Clinton campaign’s anything-but-benign neglect of this Ferraro catastrophe, falsely or truly, as a desire to hear the kind of casual prejudice that still haunts this society voiced and to not distance the campaign from it.

To not distance you from it, Senator!

MORE FROM COUNTDOWN W/ KEITH OLBERMANN

Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann Section Front

GOP creates road blocks for health reform   Bachmann breaks the rules   Veterans given inadequate health care   Fox News proves Palin wrong   Sarah Palin, revealed   Big Coal abandons truth to promote ‘energy alternative’   Lakers basketball great shares cancer journey Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann Section Front   Add Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann headlines to your news reader: