INDIANAPOLIS — Sen. Barack Obama weighed in today on the acquittals of New York City police detectives charged in fatally shooting an unarmed black Queens man, Sean Bell, saying he believed that the verdict needed to be respected and urging those who disagreed with it not to resort to violence. That would be “completely unacceptable and counterproductive,” Obama said.
“Well, look, obviously there was a tragedy in New York. I said at the time, without benefit of all the facts before me, that it looked like a possible case of excessive force. The judge has made his ruling, and we’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down,” he said in response to a question at a gas station in Indianapolis, where he was holding a news conference.
“The most important thing for people who are concerned about that shooting is to figure out how do we come together and assure those kinds of tragedies don’t happen again,” he continued. … “Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and counterproductive.”
The verdict, which has touched off a storm of protest in New York, arrives at a delicate time in the campaign for Obama. After his loss to Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary, some Democrats are quietly worrying whether Obama’s difficulty in winning over working-class white voters could pose a problem for the party if he is the nominee.
A. Good on him, kind of, for not pretending to be the Official Spokeman of Black Peopletm.
B. Why is the white vote so important, but the almost monolithic black vote not? Black voters are way more polarized than white voters and moreso than women, so why is that not the story?
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