Harry Reid apologizes for "light skinned" ["with no Negro dialect"] remark about Obama

The Washington Post ^ | 1/9/10 | Chris Cillizza

[LdSentinal]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) apologized today for referring to President Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect" in private conversations during the 2008 presidential campaign.

"I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words," said Reid in a statement. "I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments."

The Senate Majority Leader was officially neutral in the primary fight between Obama and then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.). Reid's remarks about Obama were revealed in "Game Change", a book detailing the 2008 race penned by Time's Mark Halperin and New York magazine's John Heilemann.

Reid's apology comes on the same day that a new poll conducted by the Las Vegas Review Journal showed him facing an uphill fight for re-election in 2010. Reid trailed former state Republican party chairwoman Sue Lowden by a 50 percent to 40 percent margin and was behind businessman Danny Tarkanian (R) 49 percent to 41 percent.

Only one in three voters viewed Reid favorably while 52 percent saw him in an unfavorable light in the poll.

[ColdOne]

This is the “swim with the fishes” from the White House.
Reid is done.

[OafOfOffice]

Dems use racism, welfare and entitlements to get minority votes. When the one thing that will lift them up is education and personal achievements. Republicans need to show this in their campaigns that under democrats it is only elite politicians who get a better life. Obama is enriching everyone in his party and his cronies with taxpayer funding he has robbed from us all.

The Hope and change is keep Hoping, maybe change will happen for you. Maybe not.

[HIDEK6]

I'm puzzled.

Those are probably the only true statements Harry Reid has uttered in the past 15 years.

[Lancey Howard]

Yeah, but they (Dims) do distribute the money and I guess that’s what counts.

As with the entire parasitic "base" of the Democrat party, that's ALL that matters. It's why Democrats running for election (or re-election) are never effected by scandal, dishonesty, sleaziness, or incompetence. There is absolutely no shame in the Democrat party as long as the "free money" continues to flow. Generally, only Republican scoundrels are forced to resign in disgrace.

[apocalypto]

One apologizes when one is wrong. Should Harry Reid have said President Obama has medium dark skin and speaks like a black? It was in a private conversation and not like he was shouting it on TV. Re Lott: that fake outrage was manufactured by the media to get him to resign.

[cpanter]

So, he said this in private conversations a year ago... to who? When Halperin writes it, is he there? If he was, he saves it for a book to be published a year later? Did the book just come out?

[maggief]

January 4, 2010, 8:58 am
Obama Faces Full Plate Upon Return
By JEFF ZELENY

EXCERPT

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/obama-faces-full-plate-upon-return/

Mr. Obama had planned to make a stop on the way back to Washington – a visit to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada – but his aides concluded that it was better to return to the White House where a full agenda awaits.

[isom35]

surely this will be on keith’s “worst persons”.....not

[OafOfOffice]

Oh Lookie here! Gotta get the book.

The Juiciest Revelations In "Game Change"

Game Change, the long-awaited and very gossipy chronicle of the 2008 campaign by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, is chock full of revelations that are bound to stir the folks who live within ten miles of the Beltway -- and perhaps even reverberate beyond Washington.

The book doesn't officially go on sale until next Tuesday. The authors are slated to appear on 60 Minutes Sunday to preview it. I found it available for purchase at a Washington, D.C. bookstore tonight.

Among the more fascinating items:

On page 37, a remark, said "privately" by Sen. Harry Reid, about Barack Obama's racial appeal.

E-mails sent late Friday to Reid staffers were not immediately answered.

The authors write on page 50 about the "war room within a war room" that Hillary Clinton put together to deal with questions about her husband's "libido." The circle of trust included media strategist Howard Wolfson, lawyer Cheryl Mills and confidant Patti Solis Doyle.

The war room within a war room dismissed or discredited much of the gossip floating around, but not all of it. The stories about one woman were more concrete, and after some discreet fact-finding, the group concluded that they were true: that BIll was indeed having an affair -- and not a frivolous one-night stand but a sustained romantic relationship. .... For months, thereafter, the war room within a war room braced for the explosion, which her aides knew could come at any moment.

(I think this was Enquirer story' Bill Clinton and a petite blond)

The authors do not identify the woman.

I don't want to give away the whole book... but I would be remiss if I did not point to the chapters about the unbelievably dysfunctional husband and wife team of John and Elizabeth Edwards. Not only, it turns out, did many senior Edwards staffer suspect that John was having an affair, several confronted John Edwards about it, and came away believing the rumors. At least three campaign aides resigned because of their knowledge of the affair well before the national media picked up on those early National Enquirer stories.

And John and Elizabeth (who the book says was known to Edwards insiders as "abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending, crazywoman") fought, in front of staffers, about the affair. The authors describe a moment where Elizabeth, in a such a state of fury, deliberately tears her blouse in the parking lot of a Raleigh airport terminal, "exposing herself. 'Look at me," she wailed at John and then staggered, nearly falling to the ground." (That's page 142.) (This was in October, by the way, well before the media took the reports of the Hunter affair seriously.)

About Obama himself the book includes plenty of observations about his manner and temperament, many astute and some original, though no earth-shattering revelations. The chapters about John and Cindy McCain's relationship are fascinating; the coverage of McCain's selection of Sarah Palin is mostly familiar ground. There are insights about the way the Bush White House perceived the McCain campaign, although they can be summed up as: not very well.

There are telling anecdotes, such as when Ed Goeas, a pollster for Rudy Giuliani, responds to Judith Giuliani's query about how she could best help his campaign: "First of all, you're his third wife. What you should try to be is humble." (Page 290).

Political scientists aren't going to like this book, because it portrays politics as it is actually lived by the candidates, their staff and the press, which is to say -- a messy, sweaty, ugly, arduous competition between flawed human beings -- a universe away from numbers and probabilities and theories.

[OafOfOffice]

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/64991

CLINTON MISTRESS REVEALED

The NATIONAL ENQUIRER exclusively reveals the woman who broke Bill’s cheatin’ heart.

Meet Julie Tauber McMahon!

[freespirited]

These seem to be perfectly accurate, non-demeaning and, thus, unobjectionable descriptors.

All sorts of perfectly accurate and non-demeaning descriptors are now taboo.

I'll take a WAG you have been away from academia for too long. ;-)

[surrey]

Let’s face it he’s a real phony.

[ladyvet]

I think the WH is leaking this old news on Reid to force him to walk since he has become radioactive in Nevada, like Daschle in his home state.

I was thinking the same thing.

[Just A Nobody]

“President Bush is a liar,” Reid, the Senate’s Assistant Majority Leader, said. “He betrayed Nevada and he betrayed the country.”

“And people may not like what I said, but I said it, and I don’t back off one bit.”

“The man’s father is a wonderful human being,” Reid, D-Nev., told students at Del Sol High School when asked about the president’s policies. “I think this guy is a loser.”

Shortly after the event Reid called the White House to apologize...

RS: You’ve called Bush a loser.
HR: And a liar.
RS: You apologized for the loser comment.
HR: But never for the liar, have I?

“It should be noted that Reid did apologize for calling Bush a loser. But it’s also true that Reid called Bush a liar and never apologized, and that his fellow Democrats were not outraged.

Harry Reid called President George W. Bush a “loser” and a “liar. Reid subsequently apologized for calling Bush a loser, but he refused to apologize for calling him a liar.

[okie01]

I'll take a WAG you have been away from academia for too long. ;-)

Saw my last professor in 1961...

[windcliff]

Thanks for the info. I hope to get it at the library.

[Chode]

and the RATS, take another one in the..............................HA ha!!!

[Anti-Bubba182]

"If Trent Lott had to resign, so should Harry Reid, isn't that right Liberal Media?"

I don't know, ask Senator Byrd.

[DennisR]

Bingo! You apparently cannot speak the truth if it is not perceived as being PC. Being PC destroys relationships, honesty, truth, and freedom. It must be destroyed. And “racism” is the first pillar that needs to be toppled.