Ferraro Leaves Clinton Camp Over Remarks About Obama

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton greets Latino businesspeople after speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington. (By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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Obama has insisted that race should not be part of the campaign, even as results of recent primaries suggested an electorate split along racial lines. In Mississippi, for example, he won 3 in 10 white voters, but won African Americans overwhelmingly.

He said the 10 weeks of the Democratic primary season have shown his ability "to build a coalition that includes sizable black support, as well as support from a whole host of other quarters."

"There has been a running thread through this campaign of both pundits and prognosticators asking first, was I black enough, then am I too black," Obama said at a news conference in Chicago yesterday. "I don't know what, exactly, the margin of the black vote is that is optimal, not too black, but black enough. But that's not the approach that we've taken in this campaign."

In the remarks that led her to resign, Ferraro told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., that Obama "would not be in this position" if he were a "woman of any color" or a white man.

She repeatedly defended the statement on television yesterday even after Obama aides called on Clinton to remove her and after Obama decried her comments as "slice-and-dice politics."

Staff writer Peter Slevin, traveling with the Obama campaign, contributed to this report.