ORANGEBURG, South Carolina - White House
hopeful Barack Obama, taking a fellow black lawmaker to task, said voters are
ready to elect a black US president.
"At every turn in our history, there's been somebody who said we can't," the
Democratic senator from Illinois told a nearly all-black audience of about 2,000
at Claflin University on Saturday.
White House hopeful Barack Obama,
taking a fellow black lawmaker to task, said voters are ready to elect a
black US president.[senate.gov]
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"Some people said we can't do this, we can't do that, so we shouldn't even
try. If I have your support, if I have your energy and involvement and
commitment and ideas, then I'm here to tell you, 'Yes we can."'
The comments drew the loudest ovation during a question-and-answer session in
his first campaign swing through South Carolina, an early voting state in the
Democratic primaries.
The first-in-the-South contest here is seen as a test of candidates'
abilities to reach black voters. Half of the state's Democratic primary voters
are black.
Obama responded to comments this past week by Democratic state Sen. Robert
Ford of Charleston, South Carolina, who helped mobilize black voters for former
North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in 2004, but has switched to Hillary Rodham
Clinton in the 2008 presidential race.
Ford said Tuesday that Obama, a first-term senator, has much to prove. "The
media made this guy bigger than life," Ford said. "This guy isn't tested and
they made him a rock star."
Ford said one reason he was supporting Clinton, the New York senator, is that
he is skeptical Obama can win the presidency and worries his nomination could
hurt other Democratic candidates.
"Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose - because he's
black and he's top of the ticket. We'd lose the House and the Senate and the
governors and everything," Ford said.
Ford drew widespread criticism for his comment and later apologized.
US House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, introduced
Obama, saying "Run, Barack, run."
"Obama is able to run today because Rosa Parks sat down," Clyburn said. "He
is able to run today because Septima Clark stood up."
Parks, in 1955, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery,
Alabama, sparking a mass boycott by thousands, mainly black women domestic
workers who had long filled the buses' back seats.
Clark was an educator and activist for the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People decades before the nation's attention turned to
racial equality.
Clyburn says he is not endorsing a primary candidate.
US Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut spoke earlier Saturday at a Richland
County Democratic Party breakfast to a crowd of less than 100.
Both Dodd and Obama had to shorten their South Carolina visits to get back to
Washington where they voted for a Senate resolution opposing sending more US
troops to Iraq. The nonbinding measure fell four votes short.
Later Saturday, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine of Virginia endorsed Obama's candidacy.
"Just the opportunities we have had to work together, my sense of where the
nation is and what the nation needs makes me believe that the senator is the
right candidate," Kaine said at a news conference with Obama outside Virginia's
Executive Mansion in Richmond.
Meanwhile, Edwards made a stop in Las Vegas on Saturday, taking his plan for
universal health care to the local branch of the electrical workers labor group
to which his brother belongs. He spoke to about 300 people at the local office
of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
The Edwards campaign is hoping his ties to the labor movement will help him
gain support in Nevada, which has taken on new importance in the Democratic
nomination calendar since winning the No. 2 spot between Iowa and New Hampshire.
Edwards' health care plan, which he unveiled two weeks ago, requires
employers to cover their workers or pay into a fund to help them. It also
mandates that health care providers decrease administrative costs and switch to
electronic records, and would create a market for individuals and small
businesses to shop for coverage providers.
"It creates market power for people who don't have it,
competition that doesn't presently exist," Edwards said.