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He fell and broke his hipLater, Craig Smith joked...He fell and broke his hipLater, Craig Smith joked to Calvin that he was the only one of my supporters who literally busted his ass for meBut so did Zell Miller, Congressman John Lewis, and a lot of other GeorgiansAnd so did a number of Arkansans who had organized themselves into the Arkansas TravelersThe Travelers campaigned in almost every state with a presidential primaryThey always made a difference, but they were particularly effective in GeorgiaThe political press said that to go forward I had to win decisively there, with at least 40 percent of the voteThanks to my friends and my message, I won 57 percent The following Saturday, in South Carolina, I picked up my second win, with 63 percent of the voteI had a lot of help from Democratic officials, plus former governor Dick Riley, and friends from Renaissance WeekendTom Harkin made a last-ditch effort to derail me, and Jesse Jackson, a South Carolina native, went around the state with him criticizing meDespite the attacks, and the crass response to them I carelessly made at a radio station in a room with a live microphone, other black leaders stayed hitchedI received a large majority of the black vote, as I had in GeorgiaI think it surprised my opponents, all of chanel coin purse whom had strong convictions and good records on civil rightsBut I was the only southerner, and both I and the Arkansas blacks supporting me brought years of personal connections to black political, educational, business, and religious leaders all across the South and beyond As in Georgia, I also got good support from white primary votersBy 1992, most of the whites who wouldnt support a candidate with close ties to the black community had already become RepublicansI got the votes of those who wanted a President to reach across racial lines to attack the problems that plagued all AmericansThe Republicans tried to keep this groups numbers small by turning every election into a culture war, and turning every Democrat into an alien in the eyes of white votersThey knew just what psychological buttons to push to get white voters to stop thinking, and when they got away with it, they wonBesides trying to win the primary, I was trying to keep enough white voters thinking to be competitive in the South in the general election After Georgia, Bob Kerrey withdrew from the raceAfter South Carolina, Tom Harkin did, tooOnly Tsongas, Brown, and I headed into Super Tuesday, with its eight primaries and three caucusesTsongas defeated me balenciaga blue badly in the primaries in his home state of Massachusetts and neighboring Rhode Island, and won the caucuses in DelawareBut the southern and border states made the day a rout for our campaignIn all the southern primariesin Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and TennesseeI won a majority of the voteIn Texas, with the help of friends Id made in the 1972 McGovern campaign and a big majority among Mexican-Americans, I won with 66 percentIn all the other primary states I did better than that, except for Florida, which, after a hotly contested race, went 51 percent Clinton, 34 percent Tsongas, 12 percent BrownI also won the caucuses in Hawaii, thanks to Governor John Waihee, and in Missouri, where Lieutenant Governor Mel Carnahan endorsed me, despite having his own primary campaign for governor After Super Tuesday, I had just a week to cement my strategy of building an insurmountable lead in Illinois and MichiganOnly a month earlier, I had been in free fall, with all the media experts predicting my demiseNow I was in the leadHowever, Tsongas was still very much aliveOn the day after Super Tuesday, he quipped that, because of my strong showing in the southern primaries, he would consider me as his knockoff gucci handbags vice-presidential running mateThe next day he, too, was in the Midwest, questioning my character, my record as governor, and my electabilityFor him the character issue was the middle-class tax cutA new poll showed that around 40 percent of the American people also doubted my honesty, but I doubted that they were thinking about the tax issue There was nothing to do but stick to my strategy and press onIn Michigan, I visited the small town of Barton, near Flint, where a large majority of the residents had come from Arkansas, looking for jobs in the auto industryOn March 12, I spoke in Macomb County, near Detroit, the prototypical home of the Reagan Democrats, voters who had been lured away from our party by Reagans anti-government, strong-defense, tough-on-crime messageIn fact, these suburban voters had begun voting Republican in the 1960s, because they thought the Democrats no longer shared their values of work and family, and were too concerned with social programs, which they tended to see as taking their tax money and giving it to blacks and wasteful bureaucrats I told a full house at Macomb County Community College that I would give them a new Democratic Party, with economic and social policies based on opportunity for and sale chanel quilted handbag responsibility from all citizensThat included corporate executives earning huge salaries without regard to their performance, working people who refused to upgrade their skills, and poor people on welfare who could workThen I told them we couldnt succeed unless they were willing to reach across racial lines to work with all people who shared those valuesThey had to stop voting along the racial divide, because the problems are not racial in natureThis is an issue of economics, of values The next day, I gave the same message to a few hundred black ministers and other activists at the Reverend Odell Joness Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in inner-city DetroitI told the black audience, many of whom had Arkansas roots, that I had challenged the white voters in Macomb County to reach across the racial divide, and now I was challenging them to do the same, by accepting the responsibility part of my agenda, including welfare reform, tough child-support enforcement, and anti-crime efforts that would promote the values of work, family, and safety in their neighborhoodsThe twin speeches got quite a bit of attention, because it was unusual for a politician to challenge Macomb County whites on race or inner-city blacks on welfare and new prada replica handbags cr11:22 PM - Wednesday, May 5, 2010
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