Clinton Aide Compares Obama to Jesse Jackson

February 25, 2008, 11:12 am
Amy Chozick reports on the presidential race.

Despite the backlash against President Clinton when he compared the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama to that of Rev. Jesse Jackson after the South Carolina primary, a top Clinton adviser evoked that comparison again today.

Long-time Democratic National Committee member Harold Ickes, who served as deputy chief of staff for President Clinton and is a top aide to Sen. Hillary Clinton, made the comparison at a breakfast with reporters today when asked if he thinks stretching the Democratic primary on for three more months will hurt the Democrats in a general election.

“We have two really strong and very good candidates. This party has been blessed … to have a woman who, I think will be the next president of the United States [and] to have a powerful spokesman in the form of Sen. Obama and he is, that’s one of the reasons I supported Jesse Jackson in 19894 and 1988, I thought we needed a strong, powerful candidate, a black candidate, running for president,” Ickes said.

Indeed, Ickes did work on Jackson’s presidential bids. But the comparison is a sensitive subject for voters, who felt President Clinton’s comment comparing Obama’s decisive South Carolina win to that of Jackson was inappropriate and racially charged.

Some say the comment could have contributed to some of his wife’s losses in the February races. Ickes repeatedly told reporters that he does not feel the race is over, despite Clinton losing 11-straight contests to Obama. When asked whether she should withdraw her candidacy so that the Democratic Party can focus on beating the Republicans in November, Ickes gave a strong “no.”
“We don’t think we’ve reached that point,” he said. “There’s always a drumbeat by the front-runner of ‘Oh, we’ve got to shut it down, we’ve got to close it off, we’ve got to get on with the business of taking on the other side.’ But my view is if you look at the closeness of where we are today, compared to elections of the past, all of which I’ve participated in some shape or form since 1968, I just don’t think we’re anywhere close to that and I think we ought to let it go further down the line.”

Clinton will give a foreign-policy speech today in Washington, followed by a fund-raiser. On Tuesday she will meet Obama in Cleveland for their final one-on-one debate before the four March 4 nominating contests in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

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