I think it surprised my opponents, all of 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 badly in the primaries in his home state of Massachusetts
replica omega seamaster planet ocean 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 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
quilted chanel purse 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 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
chanel quilted bags 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 crimeWhen both groups responded strongly to the same message, I wasnt surprisedIn their heart of hearts, most Americans know that the best social program is a job, that the strongest social institution is the family, and that the politics of racial division are self-defeating
In Illinois, I visited a sausage factory with black, Hispanic, and Eastern European immigrant
chloe black employees to highlight the companys commitment to giving all employees who hadnt finished high school access to a GED programI met a new citizen from Romania who said he would cast his first vote for meI worked in the black and Hispanic communities with two young activists, Bobby Rush and Luis Gutierrez, both of whom would later be elected to CongressI toured an energy-efficient housing project with a young Hispanic community leader, Danny Solis, whose sister Patti went to work for Hillary in the campaign and has been with her ever sinceAnd I marched in Chicagos StPatricks Day parade, to the cheers of supporters and jeers of opponents, both enhanced by the beer that was in ample supply at bars along the parade route
Two days before the election, I debated Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown on television in ChicagoThey knew it was make-or-break time, and they went after meBrown grabbed the spotlight with a harsh attack on Hillary, saying that I had steered state business to the Rose firm to increase her income and that a poultry company her firm represented got special treatment from the Department of Pollution Control and Ecology because of herThe charges were ridiculous and the vehemence with which Jerry made them angered meI explained the facts, as I had done when Frank White attacked Hillarys law practice in the 1986 governors
omega seamaster fake ra