Looks like Bob Johnson wants to get knee deep in the Democratic presidential race doo-doo all over again. Actually, he is knee-deep in it.
On Monday, speaking to the Charlotte Observer, he did his best Geraldine Ferraro imitation and that Sen. Barack Obama would not be his party's leading candidate if he were white.
"What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called 'Jerry Smith' and he says I'm going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote?" Johnson said. "And the answer is, probably not."
"Geraldine Ferraro said it right. The problem is, Geraldine Ferraro is white. This campaign has such a hair-trigger on anything racial ... it is almost impossible for anybody to say anything."
"Billionaire Bob," the founder of BET, which he sold for close to $3 billion to Viacom and who also owns the NBA Charlotte Bobcats, is a longtime friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Johnson first stepped "into it" back in January when he was stumping for NY Senator Hillary Clinton by referring to Illinois Senator Barack Obama and "what he was doing in the neighborhood."
Many took that as a reference to Obama's acknowledged drug use in his youth. But in a statement, Johnson said he'd been "referring to Barack Obama's time spent as a community organizer and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect."
On Monday, the Observer reported that Johnson also alluded to the incident.
"I make a joke about Obama doing drugs (and it's) 'Oh my God, a black man tearing down another black man'," Johnson said.
The Obama campaign dismissed Johnson's comments.
"This is just one in a long line of absurd comments by Bob Johnson and other Clinton supporters who will say or do anything to get the nomination," said spokesman Dan Leistikow. "The American people are tired of this and are ready to turn the page on these kind of attack politics."
Johnson disputed the notion that Obama has built a broad coalition. Most of his support, he said, comes from African Americans and white liberals but not white, working-class Democrats.
"I don't think he has that common -- what I call `I-want-to-go-out-and-have-a-drink-with-you -- touch," Johnson said.
Johnson said Obama is likely to win the nomination and has had the support of "the liberal media."
"They sort of dislike Hillary for her vote on the war. They don't want to see Bill and Hillary in power again," he said. "So Obama comes in and runs a smart campaign. But that's not the Second Coming, in my opinion, of John F. Kennedy, FDR or the world's greatest leaders."
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