Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Obama told the Allentown Morning Call that Ferraro's remarks were divisive.
"I think that anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd," Obama told the newspaper. "I would expect that the same way those comments don't have a place in my campaign, they shouldn't have a place in Senator Clinton's."
Later in the day, Obama told reporters at a Chicago news conference that he thought Ferraro's remarks were "wrong-headed" and ridiculed "The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African American named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency"
Ferraro has held one fundraiser for Clinton. She said the Clinton campaign cannot fire her because she is not an adviser. "It's impossible [for the Clinton campaign] to fire somebody who's not involved with it," she said. Nonetheless, Ferraro notified Clinton by letter Wednesday that she would no longer serve on Clinton's finance committee as an honorary New York Leadership Council chair.
In a statement, Clinton distanced herself from Ferraro's initial remark. "I do not agree with that, and you know it's regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides say things that veer off into the personal," Clinton said. "We ought to keep this focused on the issues. That's what this campaign should be about."
Obama Isn't the First Black Candidate Ferraro's Insulted
It turns out, however, that this isn't the first time that Ferraro -- who, as former Vice President Walter Mondale's running mate, ended up buried in a 49-state landslide by Ronald Reagan -- has made racially-insensitive remarks about an African-American presidential candidate.
Ferraro, now 72 and a principal with a government lobbying and strategic communications firm, said virtually the same thing against the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Mondale's chief rival for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination and who sought the party's top spot again four years later.
In a interview with The Washington Post published on April 15, 1988, Ferraro said that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."
Asked by the Post for his reaction to Ferraro's remarks, Jackson responded with a remark that might sound eerily familiar to an Obama supporter 20 years later: "We campaigned across the South . . . without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got North to New York that we began to hear this from [then-New York City Mayor Ed] Koch, President Reagan and then Mrs. Ferraro . . . . Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history."
Clinton Makes Extraordinary Apology at Black Publishers' Meeting
For her part, the New York senator, in an extraordinary act of contrition, struck several apologetic notes at a Wednesday evening forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group of more than 200 African-American community newspapers across the country.
Her biggest apology came in response to a question about comments by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, after the South Carolina primary, which Obama won handily. The former president compared Obama's victory to those of Jackson when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, a comment many black voters viewed as belittling Obama's success -- and drew scathing criticism of Clinton by this blogger on January 28.
"I want to put that in context. You know I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive," the former first lady said. "We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama."
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