Hillary Rodham Clinton told a fundraising luncheon Wednesday that the Democratic Party had difficulty fending off attacks from the right wing of U.S. politics.
“Those who are on the reactionary side of the ledger have an enormous publicity machine that never quits,” she told a Democratic Party women’s leadership forum in New York.
“It’s 24 hours a day. They have networks that basically mouth their point of view, they have radio stations that get their faxes every day from sources in Washington about what the line of the day might be, they have newspapers that toe the party’s line and we have nothing on the other side to speak of.”
Calls to impeach her husband, President Clinton, have become a new favorite rallying cry of the right wing, which has accused him of campaign law abuse, improper quid pro quo and obstruction of justice.
Last month, a group of Republican members of the House sponsored a resolution to direct the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether sufficient grounds exist to impeach the president.
The president also spent the day in New York Wednesday, where he went Christmas shopping.
The president, appearing at a series of fundraising events, ventured to the South Street Shopping Sea Port, an upscale shopping mall in a former warehouse, where he purchased leather goods, jewelry and sweaters with the emblem of a Labrador.
He also was given a pair of 13EE New Balance running shoes for himself by clerks at Foot Locker. “You made my day,” the president said. “What a nice, nice thing to do.”
Clinton also toured the same Bronx neighborhood once visited by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, an area that for decades was symbolic of urban blight.
Now the neighborhood is filled with ranch-style homes where burned-out buildings once stood. Clinton toured the Charlotte Gardens development and heard from Ralph Porter, head of the Mid-Bronx Desperados Community Housing Corporation.
“This was the symbol of urban decay back in the early ’70s,” Porter said. The redevelopment efforts began after Carter and Reagan visited the area.
Clinton promised funding increases for investment development programs that helped to spur the renovation effort.
“My one message here is: Look at where the Bronx was when President Carter came here, in despair. Look at where the Bronx was when President Reagan came here and compared it to London in the Blitz. And look at the Bronx today. If you can do it, everybody else can do it,” the president said.
