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Pelosi tells Obama, Clinton to stop sniping
Quote:
(03-08) 04:00 PST Washington - --
The campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination took a rancorous turn Friday, prompting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call on the leading Democrats to cease their bickering - or risk hurting the party's chances of retaking the White House.
"I would encourage both of them, as I have, to remember we have to keep our eyes on the prize, which is the general election in November," Pelosi said Friday at a luncheon in New York sponsored by Lifetime Networks and the Hearst Corp., parent company of The Chronicle.
Her comments came on the day that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, resigned from the campaign after calling New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper.
Obama's camp, meanwhile, is still seething over Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson's accusation that Obama was "imitating Ken Starr" - the independent prosecutor who investigated the Clintons in the 1990s - by urging the release of her tax returns.
Pelosi, who has stayed resolutely neutral in the race, said it was time for the candidates to cool the overheated rhetoric of their surrogates and return the focus to the issues.
"We are all very passionate about our politics and the issues we believe in, but we have to be very dispassionate about how we approach winning," Pelosi said at the event at Hearst Tower in Manhattan. "We have to lift the debate to a place that does not turn off the American people."
The San Francisco Democrat said the intensifying rhetoric would only help the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
"There is absolutely no question that I have concerns about the attacks that are being made on one candidate or another," she said. "I do have concerns that the negativism can diminish our prospects for the general election."
Leaders may intervene
Pelosi's remarks were some of her sharpest comments about the presidential race. She often deflects questions about the campaign, but on Friday she waded in deep. She also served notice that Democratic leaders may step in if the infighting threatens the party's long-term interests.
Power, a Harvard University professor who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide, stirred outrage for an interview she gave Monday to the Scotsman newspaper, in which she said Clinton "is a monster, too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything" to win the nomination.
Power told the Boston Globe on Friday that she was jet-lagged during the interview in London, and had just fielded an upsetting call about Clinton's campaign tactics in Ohio. She told the paper, "I overreacted in a way that was unacceptable and deeply embarrassing."
By Friday morning, Clinton campaign officials held a conference call with several of her congressional allies calling on Obama to fire Power. Within hours, she had resigned.
Pelosi said the attacks were becoming too personal on both sides. She warned that they could not only damage the nominee, but could also hurt the Democrats' hopes of maintaining or growing their majorities in Congress.
"My responsibility as speaker is to make sure that I have a Democratic majority in the Congress of the United States," she said. "So while I want these candidates to operate on a proper tone so one of them will be in the White House, I have to insist upon it because I can't have their - if you want to call it bickering - have an impact on my congressional races."
Pelosi said she believes that supporters of both Obama and Clinton, after a long and exciting race, have grown strongly attached to their candidate. She worries how those voters will react when - inevitably - one of the two candidates loses.
"So many new people are involved because of Barack Obama, and we don't want them to be disenchanted," Pelosi said. "On the other hand, there is a chance that he might not win, and hopefully he will keep them in the fold. I think it will be about his leadership, too - whether he wins or not - to keep them in the fold and to attract others."
She said the same is true if Clinton loses the fight for the nomination. Many of Clinton's supporters, especially women, are just as passionate about her candidacy, and those voters will be crucial in November, Pelosi said.
Tough hides needed
"You have to have a thick skin in this business. You can win or you don't win, but it doesn't mean you pick up your marbles and go away," she said.
Pelosi said she was closely monitoring the dispute over Michigan and Florida, the two states that were stripped of their delegates because they violated Democratic Party rules by holding their nominating contests too early. Clinton - who won both contests in which neither candidate actively campaigned - is pushing for those delegates to be seated at the convention, while others are calling for "do-over" elections.
Pelosi recalled that as chair of the Democratic Party's 1984 convention in San Francisco, she was the chief enforcer of similar rules on early primaries.
"The rules are the rules. You really can't say, 'OK, well, we had the rules, but never mind,' " Pelosi said. "Having said that, the politics are the politics, and it's going to be up to the Democratic National Committee, the states involved and the campaigns to resolve this issue."
Pelosi said she's staying out of the fracas because, as chair of the party's convention in Denver in August, she may be called upon to referee the dispute.
"As chair of the convention, I want to make sure I can moderate the matter in a fair way," she said. "But I mean, let's face it: Barack Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan, so how can you say that that was an election? I think Florida has a bigger case. But in each of the cases, they are outside the rules and an accommodation is going to have to be made."
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Pelosi tells Obama, Clinton to stop sniping
I wonder if they'll listen. |
03-08-2008, 01:12 PM
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!
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