Clinton, Obama fight escalates

The Clinton-Obama fight is turning increasingly nasty and personal. In Washington, there is much talk about how the party can be put together again after the primaries. Tensions have been raised still further today with a prominent black supporter of the Clintons, the prominent entrepreneur Bob Johnson, appearing to raise both Obama’s youthful drug use and the question of how ‘black’ he is.

Johnson told an audience in South Carolina, which is a must-win state for Obama: Johnson also went off on a bizarre riff comparing Obama to Sidney Poitier in the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a film about a black man dating a white woman. 

“I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that–- I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in his book.”