Geraldine Ferraro Resigns from Clinton Campaign over Comments Made About Barack Obama
KYLE YOUMANS, BROTHER OF ASHLEY DUPRE: Just hectic, and I can't really comment on it. And I'm sticking by my sister through everything. She's going to be fine. Everything that's said is, you know, just talk. She's a great woman, an independent woman, and she'll make it through. She'll be fine.</s>OOPER: All right. This story has just gotten off the rails bizarre. That is the brother, wearing an Argyle Yankees baseball cap of Kylie -- that's Kyle Youmans, the brother of Ashley Dupre. Just think, 24 hours ago, just six hours ago, we didn't even know any of these people. According to "The New York Times," she is the 22-year-old woman now at the center of the scandal that brought down New York's Governor, Eliot Spitzer, soon to be a major motion picture. He is stepping down -- or perhaps a Lifetime movie of the week. Next week. They already have them in production. He stepped -- no, they don't. I'm just -- they might, for all I know. I should not underestimate the abilities of Lifetime producers to jump on this story. Governor Spitzer is stepping down, effective Monday. His marriage, of course, on the rocks. His legal future is in serious jeopardy. We have another explosive mixture, the Geraldine Ferraro story today. Let's take those pictures off, move on to Ferraro graphic. There we go. What Ferraro said about Barack Obama has ignited the latest brushfire over race in the Democratic presidential battle. And as the story spilled over into a second news cycle today, Ferraro resigned her position with the Clinton campaign, but she's not backing down. Now, if this sounds family, well, it actually is. CNN's Candy Crowley has the "Raw Politics."</s>CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Geraldine Ferraro wants to write her own ending to this story. "Dear Hillary," she wrote, "I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign. The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you." It was an honorary position at best, but Ferraro, a trailblazer, the first woman vice presidential candidate on a major ticket, understands politics. A clean break was needed after she said this of Obama's campaign success: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is." Resignation in hand, or at least on her BlackBerry, Clinton said she regrets Ferraro's words, but tossed it off as just another episode of surrogates gone wild.</s>CLINTON: You know, one of his top advisers had to resign last week over something she said about me. So we are aware that this happens, but we're particularly sensitive to it because of the nature of this campaign and who each of us is. So we do stand against it.</s>CROWLEY: Obama also seems intent on lowering the decibel level.</s>SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't think that there is a directive in the Clinton campaign: "Let's heighten the racial elements in the campaign." I don't think that.</s>CROWLEY: Race has been a slow-burning fuse beneath the Democratic candidates. Sometimes there's an explosion. Ferraro's words moved the campaign close to that danger zone again. The initial reaction in Obamaville was to call her remarks inappropriate, offensive, divisive, part of an insidious pattern of negativity. Camp Clinton fired back, suggesting it's the Obama campaign injecting race into the conversation with "politically calculated attacks."</s>GERALDINE FERRARO, FORMER VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Speaking for...</s>CROWLEY: Before her resignation, Ferraro pushed back on ABC's "Good Morning America," accusing Obama supporters of attacking her because she's white.</s>FERRARO: I'm hurt, absolutely hurt by how they have taken this thing and spun it to imply that in any way -- in any way I'm a racist.</s>CROWLEY: Obama says nobody suggested Ferraro was a racist. Choosing words very carefully, he settled on ridiculous.</s>OBAMA: The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African-American named Barack Obama in pursuit of the presidency, I think is not -- not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public.</s>CROWLEY (on camera): Looking toward Pennsylvania, where white working class voters are key, a focus on race does not help Barack Obama. But it may not help Clinton, either. Her campaign in the past has been criticized by party insiders as going too far. The same kind of party insiders who are super delegates, who may decide this race. Candy Crowley, CNN, Chicago.</s>COOPER: Digging keeper now, let's turn to CNN's senior political analyst and former presidential adviser David Gergen and also Mary Frances Berry, who is named chairperson of the Civil Rights Commission by President Bill Clinton in 1993. David, I want to read something that blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote on his Web site. He said, and I quote, "The Clinton campaign's decision not to reject or denounce Geraldine Ferraro's racial gaffe strikes me as a conscious and deliberate one. 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?" Do you believe this is conscious and deliberate, David?</s>DAVID GERGEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No, I don't. And I think it's just getting ratcheted up by all sides now in very unfortunate ways. I think two things can be said about -- in a positive way about Geraldine Ferraro. First, she has also said about herself that she would not have been the vice presidential candidate, had she not been a woman. So she is consistent in that sense, and secondly, I think she made a wise decision today to step down from this campaign. Having said that, what she said was highly offensive. If someone had said about Hillary Clinton, you know, "If she weren't a woman, she wouldn't be here," people in the Clinton camp would have clearly taken offense at that. Because Hillary Clinton is, yes, a woman, but she has many, many other accomplishments that make her a strong candidate. And similarly, it's offensive to say that if -- as she said, that if he were not black, he would not be here, he would not winning this if he were not black. Yes, he is black, but he has many, many other talents that he has brought to this campaign, inspirational qualities that do transcend race.</s>COOPER: To Jane Sullivan's point, does it hurt Obama to have even this discussion, to have this brought up by surrogates in the Clinton campaign, to have these kind of -- this focus on race? Does that hurt him?</s>MARY FRANCES BERRY, FORMER CHAIRPERSON, CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION: I don't think Obama should have bitten it. I think that he should have taken a pass on it, because he's a candidate who -- one of the things about him is that he transcends racial categories. So here he has been for the last couple of days, sitting around, talking about race and being slighted by an old white woman who once ran for vice president, and going over and over again. I think he would have been better off just to take a pass on it.</s>GERGEN: Anderson, can I just respectfully disagree with that? I think Barack Obama had every reason to go after these comments, because they're so reminiscent of what we were hearing just after New Hampshire and going into the South Carolina primary and just after the South Carolina primary. And those remarks by the Clintons and by some of their surrogates, trying to sort of marginalize him as simply a black and diminishing him in that sense, trying to put him in a box, you know, I think backfired on the Clinton team. And I think it was one of the turning points in his campaign that helped Barack Obama.</s>BERRY: But I'm saying that if Obama had wanted to, since this was in the Daily Breeze or wherever it was, he could have just -- and since it's Ferraro, and since there's no evidence that she's a racist of some kind, it would have been easier to take a pass on it. But if they're in a mode that they're going to attack back, no matter what anybody says, then they can go ahead and do it. But I do not think, David, it's in the category of what happened after New Hampshire. It isn't in the category of what happened with Bob Johnson. It isn't in the category of any of those things. I wouldn't put Ferraro in that category.</s>COOPER: You don't see a pattern -- you don't see a pattern here?</s>BERRY: I don't think the Clinton people, you know, told Geraldine Ferraro to go out and make those comments.</s>COOPER: But not a pattern necessarily on race, but a pattern of focusing on differences, which is what...</s>BERRY: Yes, yes.</s>COOPER: Do you see a pattern in that?</s>BERRY: Yes, I see that.</s>COOPER: David, do you see a pattern in that?</s>GERGEN: Absolutely. And, you know, of course, his blackness, and, of course, her feminineness [SIC]...</s>BERRY: Being a woman.</s>GERGEN: ... are elements in this campaign. But I think to isolate that and to say that's the reason this person is doing well, is I think just wrong-headed. I think it brings race and gender to the front of the conversation where -- and you know, I think it is very distracting. And it is intended. It's very clearly intended to diminish the candidacy of Barack Obama, and it was offensive because it was injecting race as a way to diminish him.</s>BERRY: David, I don't think that anybody who mentions that Hillary Clinton is a woman and emphasizes that she is and that she's the first woman to get this far is somehow being divisive and injecting the gender. She's obviously a woman. He's obviously a black guy. What's wrong with saying that?</s>GERGEN: But if you -- you would -- you would not accept it if I argued that, if Hillary Clinton were not a woman, she wouldn't be doing as well. I just don't think that's true.</s>BERRY: No, I'm not defending Geraldine Ferraro. I'm just saying that there's nothing wrong with calling attention to the fact that it would be historic, because it would be the first woman...</s>GERGEN: That's not what she was doing.</s>BERRY: ... or it would be the first black person.</s>GERGEN: That -- that's not what she was doing.</s>BERRY: There are ways to call attention to gender and to race, and there are ways not to call attention to gender and to race. And I think Ferraro's timing was wrong, and it's unfortunate that it happened this way, but I still don't put her in the category of being somehow racist.</s>COOPER: David, your final thought?</s>GERGEN: She's not a racist. And I just want to finally say, I want to salute Mary Berry for her -- Mary's been an enormous advocate for civil rights in the country, so I respect her view. I happen to disagree with aspects of it.</s>BERRY: OK.</s>COOPER: Mary Frances Berry, it's a pleasure to have you on. And David Gergen, as well. Thank you.</s>BERRY: Thank you.</s>COOPER: Interesting discussion. Up next, will there be a new primary battle in Florida? We could have an answer tomorrow. Is it a disaster, though, waiting to happen? Joe Johns "Keeping Them Honest," next.