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Text size – + Multiple mea culpas for Clinton
Email|Link|Comments (0) Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor March 13, 2008 10:21 AM
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

An unusually contrite Hillary Clinton apologized Wednesday night to leaders of 200 black community newspapers for any offense caused by her husband's comments comparing Barack Obama's victory in the South Carolina primary to Jesse Jackson's in 1984 and 1988 -- remarks widely criticized as belittling Obama's accomplishments.

Clinton told the National Newspaper Publishers Association that "I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply" remarks by Geraldine Ferraro, who caused an uproar by suggesting that Obama would not be where he is in the Democratic presidential race if he were a white man or a woman of any color. Ferraro, the first woman on a major party presidential ticket when she was the 1984 vice presidential nominee, stepped down from Clinton's national finance committee on Wednesday, but not before angrily accusing the Obama campaign of calling her racist.

And Clinton said she was sorry, on behalf of the entire federal government, for the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina. "I've said it publicly, and I say it privately: I apologize, and I am embarrassed that our government so mistreated our fellow citizens ... It was a national disgrace," she said, according to the Associated Press account of the meeting in Washington.

The black community newspapers are influential among African-American voters, a core constituency in the Democratic Party. Clinton enjoyed strong support from black voters in early polls last year, but after Obama won the Iowa caucuses in January and emerged as a serious contender, the vast majority of African-African voters have supported Obama in primaries and caucuses. In Mississippi on Tuesday, more than 90 percent voted for him, according to exit polls. "