Hillary losing support of blacks

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Black voters have been deeply loyal to the Democratic Party and to the Clintons, but they are more devoted to the dream of having a black president for the first time.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been engaged in racially tinged political banter with Sen. Barack Obama since her win in New Hampshire, is losing ground in polls with black voters nationally and in South Carolina, where about half of Democratic primary voters will be black.

Morris Reid, a former Clinton administration staffer, said Mr. Obama's ascendancy in the campaign is the "worst-case scenario" for Mrs. Clinton, who is in "no-win situation" with black voters.

"This movement has become bigger than Barack Obama, as it always does, and so in the annals of history, the question will come down to whether the Clintons stopped the man who could have become the first black president or they stood in the way of him becoming the first black president," said Mr. Reid, managing partner with Westin-Rinehart, a political consulting firm.

"Anything the Clintons would typically do to another opponent simply doesn't work with Obama. It just doesn't, because the smallest of things, criticisms, whatever becomes front-page news."

In South Carolina, the fight between the Clintons and the Obama campaign is dividing the party, Democratic officials said yesterday.

"I really don't think race itself or gender for that matter should be part of the discussion right now, but it is, it absolutely is," said Joe Werner, the state Democratic Party executive director.

"We've got a few e-mails from folks asking us, 'Why does it have to be this way?' For them to be talking about race seems counterproductive to the [civil rights] cause," Mr. Werner said.

Campaigning in New Hampshire, Mrs. Clinton said it took President Lyndon B. Johnson to pass civil rights legislation, explaining that great speeches, namely Mr. Obama's, are nothing without people who can achieve results.

That did not go over well with black lawmakers, who viewed that statement as a slight to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.