Bill Clinton had an angry exchange with an NBC reporter yesterday about an earlier interview in Philadelphia "in which he told a radio interviewer that the Obama campaign played the 'race card on me' during the South Carolina primary, former President Bill Clinton batted back a reporter today and basically denied the interpretation."
But look at the actual radio interview on Philadelphia's WHYY:
On WHHY [sic] radio yesterday, Susan Phillips (no relation) talked to him about how some African-American officials in Philadelphia switched their early support from his wife to Senator Obama after Mr. Clinton compared Mr. Obama’s win in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson’s. Ms. Phillips cited one official’s concerns that Mr. Clinton had “marginalized Mr. Obama as the black candidate.”
Ms. Phillips: Do you think that was a mistake and would you do that again?”
Mr. Clinton: “No, I think that they played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it along.”
And then Clinton digs himself in deeper:
In the same interview, he offered a full-throated defense of his record with African-Americans, adding: “You gotta really go some to play the race card with me. My office is in Harlem, and Harlem voted for Hillary by the way.”
Uh-huh. Now let's go back and look at the curious Harlem vote, as reported in the New York Times just after the New York primary.
Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama...
... In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn — where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton — she now barely leads, 118 to 116.
Ain't that the darnedest thing!
