-Caveat Lector-
}December 5, 2002
Sharpton raps Clinton for election losses
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Bill Clinton failed to lead the Democratic Party during last month's
midterm elections, the Rev. Al Sharpton said yesterday, and the former
president is now compounding the party's poor showing by blaming others.
"For him to say that the Democrats failed to bring out a message is
wrong," Mr. Sharpton said in an interview with The Washington Times.
"He was the messenger, he was the one out there and helped run the
campaign, him and [Democratic National Committee Chairman] Terry
McAuliffe. So how can he give an objective opinion with his subjective
involvement?"
Mr. Clinton said in a speech Tuesday to the Democratic
Leadership Council that the Democratic Party lost the midterm elections
because its candidates could not convince voters they could handle national
security, and that the party was perceived as weak in the face of
terrorism. The former president campaigned almost nonstop in the final
weeks leading up to the election, stumping for candidates in person and
recording telephone endorsements for others.
"I respectfully disagree with him," Mr. Sharpton said of Mr. Clinton's speech. "He
should
have been out there making the case for security. It was him who should have delivered
that message." He added that Mr. Clinton, who was famously described as the
"first black president" by author Toni Morrison, was actually "the first
beige president. If I run, I will be the first black president."
Mr. Sharpton, 48, is exploring a presidential bid and will announce his
intentions early next year. He said the wholesale losses suffered by the
Democratic Party in last month's elections revealed a weakened party that
needs him. "The Democratic Party has moved away from its base and the
philosophy that it has used in the past," he said. He noted that the last
12 years have produced prodigious victories for Republicans, including the
retaking of Congress in 1994 as well as winning back the Senate last month.
"These guys who have been leading have failed," Mr. Sharpton said. "The
analysis that you get from them is that they cannot afford to alienate the
white male vote. They don't have it anyway. And for years they have been
saying that we can't run off the swing voters. They aren't coming. They
need to wake up and realize that the swing voter is not going to swing
their way." The last Democratic president to win a majority of the white
male vote was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Mr. Sharpton said if he decides to run for president, he will be able to draw heavily
on the
votes of the working class and minorities, "all of whom did not turn out" in November's
elections. "I can get white voters. I got white voters when I ran for
Senate, I got dairy farmers, I got all kinds of people. I've been moving
all over the country for the last two years, talking to people. The
[Democratic Party] is underestimating our impact."
As a the first black
U.S. Senate candidate in New York, Mr. Sharpton in 1992 received 27 percent
of the overall vote in the Democratic primary; he won 90 percent of the
black vote. He also ran for mayor of New York City in 1997, surprising
many, even local Democratic Party leaders, by receiving 32 percent of the
vote in the Democratic primary.
He has solicited financial support for his
exploratory campaign from several well-heeled contributors, including Percy
Sutton, a New York civil rights lawyer; Earl Graves Jr., founder and
publisher of Black Enterprise magazine; and Robert Johnson, founder of
Black Entertainment Television.
Today Mr. Sharpton will deliver his first
urban policy speech in Salt Lake City at the National League of Cities
Conference. The highlight of that speech will be a proposal to spend $250
billion over five years on infrastructure revamping, a project he said
would infuse the private sector with jobs and money.
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