Clinton Camp Race Tinged Comments Multiply

There are yet more comments coming from the Clinton camp’s supporters that seemingly cast the election in racial terms — comments that if left unchecked could leave New York Senator Hillary Clinton with a difficult problem if she wins the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination.

The Guardian has this quote:

She is staking out policy ground slightly to the left of Obama on domestic issues, and noticeably won the votes of those on lower incomes and without college degrees. In the words of that Clinton adviser: “If you have a social need, you’re with Hillary. If you want Obama to be your imaginary hip black friend and you’re young and you have no social needs, then he’s cool.”

With advisers who see Obama as a “hip black” and use these words to reporters, Ms. Clinton might consider advancing her staff shake-up. This is inviting a controversy.

And then there’s this perhaps overblown flap which continues to rage:

If you asked the bloggers yesterday, State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo stepped on a rhetorical land mine when he used the racially charged phrase “shuck and jive” while discussing the Democratic presidential primary in a recent radio interview.

Speaking Tuesday to the New York Post’s Fred Dicker, whose show airs on Albany’s Talk 1300 radio station, Cuomo said of the early primaries: “It’s not a TV-crazed race. Frankly, you can’t buy your way through.”

He added later, “You have to sit down with 10 people in a living room. You can’t shuck and jive at a news conference; you can’t just put off reporters, because you have real people looking at you, saying ‘answer the question.’”

The 1994 book “Juba to Jive, a Dictionary of African-American Slang,” says “shuck and jive” dates back to the 1870s and was an “originally southern ‘Negro’ expression for clowning, lying, pretense.”

A truncated version of Cuomo’s quote appeared first on the Albany Times Union’s Capital Confidential blog Wednesday with the claim – later clarified – that he was talking about “Hillary’s win in New Hampshire.”

But Newsday noted that despite the blogocontroversy there was an explanation:

But several sites, including Newsday’s SpinCycle blog, posted updates after hearing from Cuomo.

“The attorney general was clearly saying that Iowa and New Hampshire were important primaries because the candidates could not duck the tough questions,” said Cuomo spokesman Jeffrey Lerner. “He clearly meant no offense to either candidate because he was praising both in the interview. ‘Bob and weave’ would have been a better phrase; that’s certainly all the attorney general meant.”

Joseph Mercurio, a New York City-based Democratic media consultant, said he doesn’t think Cuomo hurt himself seriously. “Everybody’s being a little politically correct,” Mercurio said. “I think he had enough support from black voters in his campaign that this isn’t going to be a big issue.”

Newsday offers this transcript provided to it by Cuomo’s office:

“It’s not a TV-crazed race, you know, you can’t just buy your way through that race … It doesn’t work that way, it’s frankly a more demanding process. You have to get on a bus, you have to go into a diner, you have to shake hands, you have to sit down with 10 people in a living room.

“You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference, you can’t just put off reporters, because you have real people looking at you saying answer the question, you know, and all those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you’re in someone’s living room.

“And I think it’s good for the candidates. I think it makes the candidates communicate in a way that works with real people because you know in a living room right away whether or not you’re communicating. And I think the questions are good and I think the scrutiny is good …”

Even so, it may raise eyebrows by some who wonder if the phrase would come up if Obama wasn’t running.

What continues to be intriguing is that even if that was unintentional (and it appears to be) there is a seeming pattern emerging from the Clinton camp with Obama:

–A top New Hampshire official asks reporters why they don’t run more stories about Obama’s admitted youthful drug use. It becomes a controversy, he resigns.

–Clinton supporter Senator Bob Kerrey several times repeats info about Obama’s Muslim ties and then insists he was only trying to be complimentary when it becomes a huge controversy. He apologizes. But the info has gotten into the news cycle.

–The statement from Guardian about voters who want Obama voting for him because they see him as an imaginary hip black friend (but if they vote for Hillary Clinton it’s a solid vote because they want change)..

–Cuomo’s comment.

Prediction: The Clinton camp may have a tough time getting Obama’s enthusiastic supporters to come out and vote for him on election day if this list gets longer…and there are more race-tinged zingers (intentional or unintentional) aimed his way whether on the stump, by surrogates or by unnamed campaign officials.