Getting Race Out of the Race? Obama Signals 'Truce' in Chat with Reporters

By: Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama stepped back last night from a controversy over race, agreeing that a prolonged clash over civil rights could harm their party's overall drive to win the White House.

Obama was the first to suggest a cooling of the rhetoric on race, calling reporters together to say he did not want the campaign "to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat, back-and-forth that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this."

Referring to Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards, he said that although they may have disagreements, "we share the same goals. We're all Democrats, we all believe in civil rights, we all believe in equal rights."

Clinton's campaign issued a statement in the same vein about an hour after Obama had spoken, saying it was time to seek common ground. "And in that spirit," she said, "let's come together, because I want more than anything else to ensure that our family stays together on the front lines of the struggle to expand rights for all Americans."

Strikingly, though, a Clinton supporter, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D., N.Y), sharply criticized Obama in an interview during the day. "How race got into this thing is because Obama said race," Rangel, dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, said on the television station NY1.

For all the maneuvering, Democrats are without a contested election today. After Michigan moved up its primary, the Democratic Party stripped it of its 156 national convention delegates as punishment for breaking party rules. Most candidates then pledged not to campaign or run ads in the state, and Obama and Edwards withdrew from its ballot.

Clinton, Obama and Edwards will participate today in a Nevada debate sponsored by MSNBC. A judge there ruled yesterday that Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich also must be allowed to participate. If Kucinich is excluded, Senior Clark County District Judge Charles Thompson ruled, the court will issue an injunction to stop the debate.

NBC News said it would appeal the ruling.

For much of the day yesterday, both Clinton and Obama seemed content to engage in increasingly accusatory campaign tactics.

In Nevada, the Illinois senator said that some of his opponents "don't seem to have anything positive to say about their own record. All they're trying to do is run me down."

Obama did not mention Clinton by name. But the reference was unmistakable after controversy over race and the Iraq war and as her campaign arranged a conference call to criticize his record on abortion.

Obama told NBC that the New York senator's campaign was seeking to stoke the race-related controversy. "I think there's some intentionality on the part of the Clinton campaign to knock us off message," he said.

Clinton did not mention the campaign's increasingly combative tone as she stumped in New York.

"Both Sen. Obama and I know we are where we are today because of leaders like Dr. King," Clinton said at a labor-sponsored birthday celebration in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose 79th birthday would have been today. "We have to bring our party together and our country together."

Next up for the Democrats are precinct caucuses Saturday in Nevada. Clinton's supporters awaited a court ruling on a lawsuit seeking a last-minute change to rules they agreed to months ago. The suit alleges that the rules enabling Las Vegas Strip waitresses, dishwashers and bellhops to caucus inside nine resorts violate state law and federal equal-protection guarantees. Other caucus-goers lack the same access, the suit argues.

The rules were approved in March, when Clinton was the overwhelming national Democratic front-runner. But the powerful Culinary Workers Union - which represents thousands of Strip employees, many of them Hispanic or black - voted Wednesday to endorse Obama. The lawsuit was filed Friday by six Democrats and a teachers union connected to Clinton.

Edwards is campaigning aggressively in Nevada and South Carolina, and his aides circulated a memo during the day saying both his rivals were "deeply flawed."