by Mike Dorning
In case the presidential candidates didn’t get the message from comments published in the New York Times yesterday, Rep. Jim Clyburn, the most powerful African-American in the congressional leadership, issued a written statement underscoring his unhappiness over recent comments from Sen. Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton that appeared to dismiss, respectively, the importance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s contributions to the passage of civil rights legislation and Sen. Barack Obama’s candidacy.
Clyburn is a powerful political figure in South Carolina and especially among African-Americans, who make up about half of the electorate in the Democratic primary there.
The statement carefully strikes a balance between signaling his displeasure and sticking with a position of neutrality in the primary that he has carefully maintained so far in order to avoid diminishing the influence of the South Carolina vote.His statement follows: