Senator Hillary Clinton has apologized to black voters due to the controversy surrounding the widely-condemned comments of now-resigned unapologetic campaign official Geraldine Ferraro, who basically said Obama is where he is because he is black.

News reports say Clinton’s speech was an uncharacteristically long and heartfelt apology.

But some are bound to note that it once again shoves the issue of Obama as an African-American into the news cycle. There have been accusations that this is why there have been so many instances of Clinton campaign associates raising the issue, then apologizing and resigning: to raise the issue and keep it in the news cycle. Either that or it’s an issue they simply can’t help hinting at or– in Ferraro’s case — all but discussing it complete with Al Gore-style slide show.

The New York senator, who is in a tight race with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, struck several sorry notes at an evening forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group of more than 200 black community newspapers across the country.

Her biggest apology came in response to a question about comments by her husband, Bill Clinton, after the South Carolina primary, which Obama won handily. Bill Clinton said Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, a comment many viewed as belittling Obama’s success.

“I want to put that in context. You know I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive,” Hillary Clinton said. “We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama.”

“Anyone who has followed my husband’s public life or my public life know very well where we have stood and what we have stood for and who we have stood with,” she said, acknowledging that whoever wins the nomination will have to heal the wounds of a bruising, historic contest.

“Once one of us has the nomination there will be a great effort to unify the Democratic party and we will do so, because, remember I have a lot of supporters who have voted for me in very large numbers and I would expect them to support Senator Obama if he were the nominee,” she said.

She also said this about Ferraro:

“I said yesterday that I rejected what she said and I certainly do repudiate it. I regret deeply that it was said obviously she doesn’t speak for the campaign, she doesn’t speak for any of my positions. And she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee.”

Too little, too late? Perhaps.

Particularly because Clinton’s own initial response to Ferraro was not pleasing to those outraged by the former Vice Presidential candidate’s comments.

It has now gotten to the point the point where you want to ask:

What is IN their water?…Is foot and mouth disease going around?…First Bill Clinton, now Ferraro: are two key Democrats intent on destroying their legacies?…If it’s a mistake and this is how the campaign is managed, how would a Clinton White House look?…Wasn’t there a time when Democrats of all persuasions lambasted, rejected and condemned the divide-and-rule politics practiced effectively by Karl Rove– and said Democrats would never campaign that way?

Add the begrudging, I-don’t-take-back-a-syllable resignation of Geraldine Ferraro to the growing list of Clinton campaign related incidents of the race card coming up…lingering in the air…followed by perfunctory Clinton campaign denunciations…and then a resignation.

A resignation that occurs after the controversy has been all over the media, consumed the blogosphere, provided great stand up interviews for morning news and cable news networks. And lingered. Raised as an issue. Memorably.

The REAL QUESTION now is: if you don’t think there is at least the appearance now of either some kind of a pattern or a serious lack of control of the Clinton campaign (why was Ferraro defended and/or not immediately bounced for the campaign as Obama’s “monster” aide was?) then precisely from what turnip truck did you fall off?

The upside for the Clinton side: this controversy these controversies suggest Obama is a black guy running for President. Obama has campaigned as a guy running for President who happens to be black. That is the difference and many Americans accept it.

But not Ferraro. In an apparent legacy-destroying race with former President Bill Clinton so that her name is associated with raising the race card, she resigned from Clinton’s staff defending her comments and painting Hillary Clinton as the TRUE victim. Just read the New York Times:

Geraldine A. Ferraro resigned Wednesday from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign finance committee but remained unapologetic for citing Senator Barack Obama’s race as the decisive factor in his success.

“I feel terrible for the fact that Hillary is stuck in this thing,” Ms. Ferraro said in an interview Wednesday night. “Why put her in that position?”

Ms. Ferraro said that she was not asked by anyone in the Clinton campaign to leave the committee but that she did it on her own, sending an e-mail message to the senator’s campaign Wednesday afternoon, as the political dust-up over remarks she made last week went into its second day.

Words continued to fly back and forth as the Obama campaign called on Mrs. Clinton to repudiate the remarks, Ms. Ferraro said they had been distorted, and Mr. Obama said they were “absurd.”

Ms. Ferraro, who said she and Mrs. Clinton had not discussed the matter directly, will continue to support the senator.

“I am stepping down from your finance committee,” she wrote, “so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what’s at stake in this campaign. The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen.”

CORRECTION: She is talking about TWO victims.

And how was the Clinton team reacting through all of this? Newsbusters has this interesting tidbit from Newsweek’s Howard Fineman talking to Keith Olbermann on MSNBC:

HOWARD FINEMAN: It’s clear to me the Clinton people aren’t going to back down. As you saw, they sent Maggie Williams out with a statement to defend Geraldine Ferraro who’s defending herself. So this is the fight the Clintons want, the way they want to fight it.

(Olbermann for the first time did a Special Comment against a Democrat condemning Ferraro and the Clinton campaign, although MSNBC is now viewed by Clinton supporters as the Obama network so he is not perceived as a neutral observer and his outraged Special Comments are now a fixture. Video here and here. Here is the TEXT.)

Hillary Clinton’s initial response was one that is likely to displease not just Obama supporters, but any voters who believe the race card needs to be torn up when it’s raised and immediately condemned without political qualifiers or an attempt to switch the issue.

Mrs. Clinton, saying she did not agree with the comments, called it “regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.”

The boldfaced words are what will scuttle the impact of her comments — as well as the use “regrettable” — which sounds like something written by a diplomat or a corporation trying to escape legal liability after people died using its products.

NOTE TO MRS. CLINTON: Many independent voters will either stay home, vote for a third party candidate for vote for John McCain rather than vote for a campaign that is an increasing medley of negativity, racial innuendo and personal attacks rather than a discussion of the serious issues. And if the nomination is won with tactics such as this, many Democrats wills stay home. If you win? With so many bitter feelings, count on a one term Presidency.

Here’s how the media is playing and reporting the resignation:

This post is still being written and we’re adding the roundup. When this line vanishes it will be completed.
ABC News:

While refraining from calling the comments “racist,” Obama, Wednesday, accused Ferraro of conducting “slice and dice” politics.

“I think that her comments were ridiculous. I think they were wrong-headed,” he said. “The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African-American named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public.”

Obama’s campaign, however, called for the Clinton campaign to fire her.

MSNBC’s First Read:

When questioned about why the campaign hadn’t taken a more aggressive approach to dealing with Ferraro, who is on the campaign’s finance committee, but is not a paid staffer, [Clinton Communications Director Howard] Wolfson said different situations led to different responses and used the opportunity to instead talk about instances in which Obama supporters had said controversial things.

“Each campaign has taken a different response when confronted with different issues,” Wolfson said. “I would remind everyone at the start of this campaign when David Geffen made comments that many found objectionable, Sen. Obama said he disagreed with them, but said there was no reason to remove him from the campaign and he remains a campaign fundraiser.

“When (Gen.) Merrill McPeak made comments that many found disagreeable, the Obama campaign did not remove him from their campaign. So each circumstance is different.

“Geraldine Ferraro is not an advisor. She’s not a member of the staff, and we have made clear that we reject her comments, that we disagree with her comments. She was not speaking on behalf of the campaign and in the interviews that she was engaged in today she is not speaking on behalf of the campaign, and I think she was making that clear.

Los Angeles Times:

On Tuesday, Clinton distanced herself from the remarks but said intemperate remarks are a problem on both sides. Obama expressed distaste.

In a brief Associated Press interview Tuesday while she campaigned in Harrisburg, Pa., Clinton said she did not agree with Ferraro. She added, “It’s regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.”

Obama, in an interview with the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., said, “I don’t think Geraldine Ferraro’s comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive. I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd. And I would expect that the same way those comments don’t have a place in my campaign they shouldn’t have a place in Sen. Clinton’s either.”

But Ferraro dug in her heels.

“I’m sorry that people thought it was racist,” Ferraro told Fox News on Tuesday. She said she was not acting as a Clinton representative, but was promoting a speech she had been paid to make, and resented the implication that she vets what she says with anyone.

“She can’t rein me in,” said Ferraro, referring to Clinton.

How passionate has debate come over this issue? Pat Buchanan told a guest to shut up.

A CROSS-SECTION OF WEBLOG REACTION:

–Andrew Sullivan:

The one indisputably positive aspect of the Obama candidacy - to left or right - has been his remarkable ability to make a case for his nomination without relying on this kind of identity politics and victim-mongering. That he doesn’t shrink from minority status and pretend that his blackness doesn’t matter is not the same thing. His ability to both represent a black man and yet represent a figure beyond a black man is the core of the historic salience of his candidacy…

…I hope this stuff ends soon - and that the Obama camp does not degenerate into constantly being offended, however justified the offense is. Better to remind ourselves of the positive aspects that Obama has allowed for and that his enemies are trying to cloud and pollute.

–Booker Rising (which calls itself a “site for black moderates and black conservatives” but is a MUST READ for everyone) has a post that needs to be read in its entirety. A small part 4 U:

The Clinton campaign is getting ever more ridiculous, and racist. White folks in her camp are jealous of Sen. Obama’s success, feel he (and black Democratic primary voters) are getting “too uppity” on the political aspirations front. Damn, I’m not even a Democrat or a a liberal, but I call it as I see it. I’ve been talking about the neo-Southern Strategy, even taking hits for it.

Andrew Sullivan shares my view, although I disagree with him that (1) Ms. Ferraro’s original comments were merely a gaffe; and (2) this is only Rove-Morris (as if Democrats haven’t pulled the racist political card before): “The Clinton campaign’s decision not to reject or denounce Geraldine Ferraro’s racial gaffe strikes me as a conscious and deliberate one. The Obama campaign saw Samantha Power resign for a less offensive remark. But Ferraro is now on the networks and airwaves amping up the volume, and Clinton, in classic passive-aggressive mode, is merely ‘disagreeing.’

Isn’t this obviously about Pennsylvania? Isn’t this classic Rove-Morris politics - to keep designating Obama a beneficiary of affirmative action and Clinton a victimized white woman in order to racially polarize a primary where Clinton needs white ethnic votes? Ferraro’s original gaffe was an accident. The compounding of it is a strategy.”

–Will Bunch believes this is part of a strategy. Read it all. Excerpt:

So exactly how many blue-collar whites in Pennsylvania still hold views on race and politics that are similar to a fictional TV character from the 1970s? Certainly not all of them, and hopefully not most of them, but most likely some of them — and in the end that’s not exactly what matters anyway.

What matters is that the Clinton campaign is convinced that Archie Bunker is voting in Pennsylvania in April 22, and they clearly will not struggle hard to repudiate any idea — no matter how loathesome — that can squeeze out a few extra voters in that regard.

That’s why it hangs out there the idea — expressed this time by Clinton herself — that Obama is not a Muslim “as far as I know.” Or that losses in places like South Carolina don’t matter because Jesse Jackson won there — and check out what Geraldine Ferarro said about Jesse Jackson in 1988, so you see there’s a history here. Or the paternalistic idea that Obama — a fellow senator with Clinton and McCain — is somehow “not ready” to be commander-in-chief, with not-so-vague overtones of affirmative action that is so unpopular in Bunker-land.

–Ed Morrissey:

The Ferraro flap promises to hurt both Obama and Hillary in its flameout. It makes Obama look as though he can’t take analysis, let alone criticism. Hillary, meanwhile, looks vacillating, having attempted to distance herself from Ferraro’s remarks without taking any apparent action to get her to shut up about Obama’s race.

Mostly, though, the entire chapter is just one more briefly entertaining and somewhat embarrassing stop on the Democratic identity-politics meltdown.

–Ann Althouse:

The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen. Come on, that’s hilarious! She plays Hillary’s surrogate and makes an attack that Hillary can’t do directly, then cries foul when she’s attacked as if it’s some underhanded way to get at Hillary? She deserved the attack, and it was perfectly appropriate to attack her as a way to attack Hillary.

But it’s interesting the way Obama and Hillary are attacking each other through surrogates and retaliating by expressions of outrage that force the elimination of each other’s surrogates. I wonder how many rounds of that we’re expected to watch before we see it as a childish game.

–Kos of Daily Kos (NEW KOS QUOTE):

This is what the Clinton campaign is reduced to. Taking a candidate who has inspired hope and passion, and working overtime to turn him into the “black candidate” even though she has no hope of winning the nomination absent a coup by super delegate. Now there’s a legacy for Clinton. Congrats to her on pulling that one off.

And it’s clear as day, given their refusal to ask for Ferraro’s resignation, that the Clinton campaign is as complicit and pleased with Ferraro’s words as they are with her media strategy.

….I see that Ferraro just resigned the campaign so she can conveniently spew this…without being directly linked to Clinton, but the two are now inseparable. The Clinton campaign didn’t ask for a resignation, and they looked the other way as Ferraro ramped up the racial rhetoric for political gain.

–Americablog:

The Ferraro episode is just the latest and clearest evidence. Ferraro has been in the game for a long time. She gets it. She knows how the media operates. She knows the impact of her words. She is, after all, a Fox News consultant with her own Fox News bio. The Clinton campaign also knew exactly what was happening. They didn’t stop it. And, it’s hard to imagine Howard Wolfson and his crew couldn’t rein in Ferraro.

…
Clinton won’t win the most pledged delegates and she won’t have the most votes cast. Every day, the nomination slips further out of her grasp, which makes the Clinton campaign act more desperate. The race-baiting is beyond desperate. What Clinton is doing now is shaping her legacy — and it’s shaping up to be an ugly legacy. Her supporters need to step in and save Hillary from her campaign.

–The Plank:

Ferraro’s original statement to Daily Breeze, which suggested that Obama has gotten preferential political treatment because of his race, was a dog-whistle to white voters who resent affirmative action. (Her subsequent statement to the New York Times, in which she defiantly defended herself by proclaiming “I will not be discriminated against because I’m white,” wasn’t a dog whistle. It was a huge, screeching megaphone.) Dwelling on that probably won’t help the Obama campaign in Pennsylavnia, particularly given the racial voting patterns yesterday’s Mississippi result confirmed.

A cynic–ok, maybe even a non-cynic–might suggest that’s precisely why the Clinton campaign isn’t moving more swiftly to cut ties with Ferraro. Either way, though, Obama would be well advised to change the subject. He should force Clinton to answer questions about something in her record or policies–or try and shift the focus over to McCain. Whatever. This may be a case where the best defense is a good offense.

–Michelle Malkin:

“The sexist media” just had Geraldine Ferraro on–again–and she was whining on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes program about her fateful Obama comments to the Torrance Daily Breeze turned into a national maelstrom.

“I wasn’t talking to the national press,” she complained. How did it happen that her little comments to a little paper get such widespread attention?

Ferraro puts on her tinfoil hat and blames Obama guru David Axelrod. Please. It’s called the 21st century, Gerry.

–(en)Gender:

I’m absolutely flabbergasted by the racist insinuations Ferraro has made.

–Western Standard:

While some might say that it takes one affirmative action candidate to know another, I don’t see how there’s any denying that Geraldine Ferraro was absolutely right when she said that Barack Hussein Obama is where he is today more or less entirely because of his race.

Let’s get real for a minute here, folks. Do you really think that, if instead of Barack Hussein Obama, he was Barry Harold O’Brien he would even be a United States Senator, let alone a candidate for the Presidency?

Hell, do you think that - if he was a white Irish-American - Obama would have been the President of the Harvard Law Review? Who knows? I certainly don’t. His sterling record of legal accomplishment doesn’t exactly suggest that he was one of the nation’s outstanding legal minds - surely a prerequisite for being the President of the Harvard Law Review most of the time, other factors notwithstanding.