Did Hillary Snub the District?
DENVER—At today’s voting-rights protest outside the Denver Mint—more on that later—Shadow Sen. Michael D. Brown brought up Sen. Hillary Clinton’s speech to the convention last night. About halfway through, the junior senator from New York said: “I will always be grateful to everyone from all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the territories who joined our campaign on behalf of all those people left out and left behind by the Bush administration.”
That gratitude, of course, omits the District, which is neither a state, a territory, nor Puerto Rico.
“She forgot us, and our job is to make sure that people don’t forget,” Brown told the crowd, though he called Clinton one of the legislators he admired most. “She’s always done her job for us; she’s always supported state rights, but our job is to remind people that we’re here.”
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty agreed this afternoon that it was a snub. “I don’t know if it was a conscious slight…I wouldn’t say that without hearing the senator’s response.”
Peter Rosenstein, the head of the Clinton contingent in the D.C. delegation, says the line was a “clearly unintended omission,” calling the speech a “home run.”
“I didn’t even notice it,” Rosenstein says. (LL missed it too, but a friend immediately pointed it out.) But he does point out a crucial fact: “The reality is, D.C. voted 78 percent for Barack Obama…The speech was focused on the nation and not on D.C.”
“I’m more concerned about [Obama],” Rosenstein says, wondering whether the Democratic nominee will broach the subject in his acceptance speech Thursday. “He’s gonna be the next president.”
Rosenstein is scheduled to meet with Clinton this afternoon along with other top supporters of the erstwhile front-runner. He says he will mention the controversy to her.
2 Responses to “Did Hillary Snub the District?”
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August 27th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Live in this city long enough, and you’re antennae are tuned in to slights like this one. The moment she said that, I nudged my wife on the sofa and said, “She left us out.” It is a snub, no matter how you look at it. To mention the territories but not the city that hosts the federal government is inexcusable. Speechwriters earn their six figures to avoid mistakes like that one. Of course, it’s in character for Hillary. Remember the Potomac Primary? She was in Texas, I believe, when the results came in. They weren’t favorable to her, so she never made a public reference to it.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I actually smacked my hand to my forehead…other people in the room looked at me like I was nuts and I pointed it out to them…
I’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt though…maybe this goes back to the whole “let’s bash Washington” tirade we’re going to hear over the next 60+ odd days….