Obama attempts to defuse race controversy

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Barack Obama was to directly address the issue of race Tuesday as he sought to defuse a controversy over inflammatory statements by his longtime pastor that have aggravated racial divisions in the contentious Democratic White House battle.

The Illinois senator, locked in a tight race with Hillary Rodham Clinton, is using a speech at a site near Philadelphia to present what his campaign said would be a comprehensive take on "race, politics, and unifying our country."

Among other things, Obama was seeking to calm the uproar over racially tinged sermons by his former pastor at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The controversy has undercut Obama's campaign theme of overcoming the country's racial divide and raised doubts among white voters about his candidacy.

The historic battle between Clinton and Obama for the Democratic nomination has been marked by acrimony on both sides, raising concerns among party officials that such fighting would divide the party and cost them the White House as Republicans begin to coalesce around nominee-in-waiting John McCain.

Along with the tense nature of the race, Democrats have also been grappling with how to hold new nomination contests in Florida and Michigan - two states that were stripped of their delegates by the national party for holding their contests ahead of schedule.

On Monday, a possible solution on Florida fell apart as state Democratic officials abandoned their suggestion to hold a primary with a mail-in vote and threw a dispute over delegates into the lap of the national party. That left unresolved how to deal with the state's 210 delegates.

Democrats in Michigan, meanwhile, moved closer to holding another contest on June 3. Legislative leaders reviewed a measure Monday that would set up a privately funded, state-administered do-over primary, The Associated Press learned.

Clinton won the popular vote in both states. But she trails Obama in the all-important delegate count, and a win in redo contests in the two states would give her add some sorely needed delegates to her tally.

With neither candidate likely to win the nomination based on the available number of pledged delegates, they have stepped up efforts to court the nearly 800 superdelegates - Democratic party and elected officials who can support whomever they choose at the party's national convention this summer, regardless of what happens in the primaries.

In the overall race for the nomination, Obama had 1,617 delegates Monday to Clinton's 1,498, according to the latest AP count. To clinch the nomination, a candidate needs 2,024 delegates.

Obama's planned speech comes a day after Clinton, seizing on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, blasted the first term senator for failing to launch his anti-war campaign until he started running for president. She also linked to the Iraq war to the U.S.'s mounting economic woes as she sought to paint herself as the candidate ready to tackle the U.S.'s toughest problems from Day One.

The comments by Wright are the latest in a series of difficulties and missteps which Obama is struggling to overcome.

Wright had been Obama's pastor for nearly 20 years until retiring recently, and officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized his two daughters. His inflammatory statements have been cited by Obama detractors, including comments that accused the U.S. of bringing on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by spreading terrorism.

Another sermon by Wright widely distributed on the Internet and on television suggested that blacks should sing "God damn America" rather than "God Bless America" because they have been treated as "less than human" by the government.

In a televised interview with the Public Broadcasting Service on Monday, Obama decried Wright's "stupid statements" and acknowledged that the controversy "has been a distraction from the core message of our campaign ... the idea that we've got to bring people together." He mentioned his own diverse background as the child of a white American mother and an African father from Kenya.

"I think it would have been naive for me to think that I could run and end up with quasi frontrunner status in a presidential election, as potentially the first African-American president, and that issues of race wouldn't come up any more than Senator Clinton could expect that gender issues might not come up," he said. Clinton is vying to be the first female U.S. president.

Obama was to address supporters Tuesday at the National Constitution Center, a museum dedicated to the U.S. Constitution, near Independence Hall, where America's founding fathers proclaimed the Declaration of Independence from British rule. Pennsylvania is also site of the next primary on April 22.

Jen Psaki, an Obama spokeswoman, said that Obama wanted to deliver the speech because "the issue of race has received an enormous amount of attention" over the past few weeks and "he thought it was an appropriate moment to discuss his thoughts on the issue."

Obama, seeking to be the first black U.S. president, has been calling on Democrats to look past racial divisions and to guard against intemperate rhetoric that he says has been sprouting on both sides.

These include Wright's fiery comments and a recent statement by former Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter and fundraiser, suggesting he had gotten so far mainly because he was black.

Ferraro later stepped down as a member of an advisory panel to Clinton after the New York senator said she did not agree with her remarks.

Last week, Obama said Wright had resigned from his campaign's African-American Religious Leadership Committee.

Clinton and Obama also charged McCain on Monday with a stubborn determination to continue a war in Iraq that the former first lady said the U.S. "cannot win."

Clinton said the United States must get out of Iraq because the battered American economy "cannot afford" the war. Obama called for a cut in taxes for middle class Americans to reverse the economic downturn that has the economy "in a shambles."

While President George W. Bush and McCain say that withdrawal means defeat, Clinton said, "defeat is keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years." She promised to begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq within 60 days should she win the White House.

While the Iraq war remains deeply unpopular among American voters, the slumping economy has raced to first place as the key issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

McCain, who has built his candidacy on his national security experience, was in Iraq on Monday and met with Iraq's prime minister.

The veteran senator and former Vietnam prisoner-of-war has been a major supporter of the Bush administration's decision in late 2006 to send 30,000 additional American forces to Iraq. He says the troop buildup, combined with the U.S.'s counterinsurgency campaign, have provided the country with a chance to win.