That's what Senator Hillary Clinton told Tim Russert on Meet the Press yesterday, but no matter what anyone says, race and gender are obviously factors in the hotly contested Democratic primary race.
After criticism over her remarks about Martin Luther King ("Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act...It took a president to get it done.”) and her husband's remarks about Barack Obama's fairy tale Iraq stance, Clinton came out swinging, saying that Obama's campaign had been distorting her remarks. She said, "This is an unfortunate story line the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully. I don't think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it's not about race."
In turn, Obama told reporters in a conference call, per the NY Post:
"I think what we saw this morning is why the American people are tired of Washington politicians and the games they play...Look, Senator Clinton made an unfortunate remark, an ill-advised remark, about Dr. King and Lyndon Johnson. I didn't make the statement. I haven't remarked on it, and she, I think, offended some folks who felt that it somehow diminished King's role in bringing about the Civil Rights Act...
She is free to explain that, but the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous."
Both Clinton and Obama are hoping to appeal to black voters; one third of South Carolina's population is black, and the South Carolina primary is on January 26. Both candidates have been emphasizing the historical firsts, that a woman and a black man are each mounting viable campaigns for presidency. The evolving race issue is making both campaigns uneasy, as the "black credentials" of each candidate are being discussed or criticized.
The Daily News' Errol Louis has a column about the nonstop "racially-tinged mud" Clinton's campaign is throwing at Obama: "Sadly, the victim is not just Obama himself, but the broader public, especially Obama's most important target constituency – people grown cynical or apathetic about politics who don't normally vote." And last week Maureen Dowd's Times column, Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House, (the day after Gloria Steinem had an op-ed, Women are Never Frontrunners) wondered about the gender card. Some tried to discredit Dowd because she filed the column from Jerusalem with a "Derry, N.H." dateline; Times editorial-page editor Andy Rosenthal says the nit-picking is "driving me out of my fucking mind."
Photograph of Hillary Clinton with church-goers after services at the Northminster Presbyterian Church in Columbia, SC yesterday by Elise Amendola/AP
