The U.S. presidential primary contest turns its focus to race, as candidate
Barack Obama addresses his preacher's racially-charged sermons, and his
opponent, Hillary Clinton, responds. Clinton also comments on the Bear Stearns
crisis.

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES (March 18, 2008) (NBC)- 
The U.S. presidential primary contest turned its focus to race, as
candidate Barack Obama addressed his preacher's racially-charged sermons, and
his opponent, Hillary Clinton, responded. Clinton also commented on the Bear
Stearns crisis.
   In a speech urging Americans to move past racial division on Tuesday
(March 18), Obama denounced his preacher's racially-charged sermons.
Obama sought to quell a political firestorm ignited when news outlets
called attention to sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Trinity United
Church of Christ in Chicago, which the Illinois senator attended for two
decades. 
   Wright, who retired recently, has railed that the Sept. 11 attacks were
retribution for U.S. foreign policy, called the U.S. government the source of
the AIDS virus and expressed anger over what he called racist America.
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the
thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," said
Wright in 2001.
   The Obama campaign has announced that Wright is no longer serving on the
Obama campaign's African-American religious leadership committee. But the
candidate told audience members in Philadelphia, he still cannot disown the
pastor. "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He
strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children,"
said Obama. "Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk
about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he
interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the
contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served
diligently for so many years."
   Also speaking in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton briefly addressed the
issue, saying voters should focus on the issue in this historic election.
"It's an important topic. Issues of race and gender in America have been
complicated throughout our history and they are complicated in this primary
campaign. There have been detours and pitfalls along the way, but we should
remember that this is a historic moment for the Democratic party and for our
country. We willl be nominating the first African American or woman for the
presidency of the United States, and that is something that all Americans can
and should celebrate," she said.  
    Clinton also discussed the financial crisis surrounding Bear Stearns.
She told reporters the economy needs a more serious fix to avoid having this
happening in the future.  "Selling off Bear Stearns' assets for two
dollars a share is not going to resolve all of the problems that we have. As
the Fed has tried to use monetary policy to try to drive down interest rates,
it hasn't spurred the kind of response that one would have expected, because I
don't think that's the root of the problem. It's part of the problem, and in
the absence of dealing with the home foreclosure prices in a more vigorous
way, we can go in and bail out or sell off assets for other companies, but
we're not going to be addressing the principal problem that we have," she
said.