Rangel slams HRC's white support talk

NEW YORK — Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), among Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top African-American supporters, was none too pleased with Clinton’s comments this week to USA Today that she has broader appeal with white voters.

The statement was “the dumbest thing she could have said,” Rangel told reporters before a Clinton fundraiser in a midtown hotel ballroom Saturday.


He called her statement “very poorly worded” but acknowledged there may be some truth to it.

“In any campaign, there are groups of people that you know that you have and groups of people that you don’t,” he said. “And I don’t care what it is. White, black, Catholic, Protestant — pollsters and newspaper reporters, that’s all they know, and so they keep asking the same question over and over. I mean, this happens in campaigns.”

Still, Rangel said Clinton should leave it to others to make the case that she has more appeal to white voters.

“That is rough campaign talk. That is not presidential talk. You leave that stuff to the boys in the backroom,” said Rangel, the dean of New York’s congressional delegation.

He insisted that Clinton can still defeat Obama for the Democratic nomination.

“Why the hell would I be here at a Clinton rally if I didn’t think she could win?” he asked reporters.

Later, in his introduction of Chelsea Clinton, Rangel continued to assail the media and its characterizations that the race is over.

“There are so many reporters out there and they keep asking me the same basic questions as though they went to a school to say how do we embarrass Hillary Clinton,” he said. The latest question, he said, is: “When is she going to quit?”

“When in the history of this world did winners quit?” Rangel asked, comparing Clinton to the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

“Did anyone ever ask them to quit?” he said.