Democrats worry attacks may cause irreversible harm

WASHINGTON — The increasingly acrimonious fight for the Democratic presidential nomination is unnerving core constituencies — African Americans and wealthy liberals — who are becoming convinced the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton's win in the Pennsylvania primary exposed a quandary for the party. Her backers may be convinced that only she can win the white, working-class voters the Democratic nominee will need in the general election, but many black leaders say a Clinton nomination, handed to her by superdelegates, would result in a disastrous breach with black voters.

"If this party is perceived by people as having gone into a back room somewhere and brokered a nominee, that would not be good for our party," House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., the highest-ranking African American in Congress, said Friday. "I'm telling you, if this continues on its current course, [the damage] is going to be irreparable."

That fear has led even some black Democrats who are officially neutral in the race, such as Clyburn, to speak out.

Clinton's camp has a vastly different interpretation, arguing that the most recent primary demonstrated that Democrats remain interested in seeing the contest continue.

"Pennsylvania did the job of calming any nerves that existed," said Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson. "It showed that the big states around the country think she's the best person to be president."

That opinion is far from unanimous. More than 70 top Clinton donors wrote their first checks to Obama in March, campaign records show. Clinton's lead among superdelegates, a collection of almost 800 party leaders and elected officials, has slipped from 106 in December to 23, according to an Associated Press tally.

Clyburn accused Clinton and her husband Friday of marginalizing black voters and opening a rift between her campaign and a black Democratic base that strongly backed Bill Clinton's presidency. Some surrogates in her camp are trying to render Obama unelectable against the Republican nominee so she could run for the Democratic nomination in 2012, he suggested.

The discussion flared up again when Bill Clinton suggested this week that Obama's campaign had played "the race card" after the former president compared the candidate to Jesse Jackson after the South Carolina primary.

"We keep talking as if it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that Obama gets 92 percent of the black vote, because since he only got 35 percent of the white vote, he's in trouble," Clyburn said. "Well, Hillary Clinton only got 8 percent of the black vote. ... It's almost saying black people don't matter. The only thing that matters is how white people respond. And that's what bothered me. I think I matter."

Both campaigns sought Friday to tamp down a race controversy. "I never believe in irreparable breaches. I'm a big believer in reconciliation and redemption," Obama said in Indianapolis. "I've said repeatedly: Come August ... people are going to be excited about taking on John McCain in November."

Campaigning for Clinton in Gary, Ind., on Friday, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, who is black, said she does not share her colleagues' concerns. "I don't think Bill and Hillary Clinton will 'do anything' to win this election," she said.

There are signs that the anger voiced by some black people is beginning to extend to the Democratic donor base. Campaign-finance records released this week show that a growing number of Clinton's early supporters migrated to Obama in March, after he achieved 11 straight victories.

Of those who had previously made maximum contributions to Clinton, 73 wrote their first checks to Obama in March. The reverse was not true: Of those who had made large contributions to Obama last year, none wrote checks to Clinton in March.

"I think she is destroying the Democratic Party," said New York lawyer Daniel Berger, who had backed Clinton with the maximum allowable donation of $2,300. "That there's no way for her to win this election except by destroying [Obama]. I just don't like it. So in my own little way, I'm trying to send her a message."

The message came in the form of a $2,300 contribution to Obama.

Donors are not the only ones who have made the leap. Gabriel Guerra-Mondragon served as an ambassador to Chile during Bill Clinton's presidency, considered himself a close friend of Sen. Clinton and became a "HillRaiser" by bringing in about $500,000 for her presidential bid.

But he had a fitful few weeks as the battle between Clinton and Obama turned increasingly negative. Last week, he decided he had seen enough.

"We're just bleeding each other out," Guerra-Mondragon said when asked why he joined Obama's finance committee.

The Obama converts include William Louis-Dreyfus. The billionaire New York financier said he had been impressed by Clinton's performance in the Senate and distressed by eight years of the Bush administration when he donated to her campaign last August. Then, he said, he began watching the campaign more closely.

"However much one might have supported the Clintons, or one might support the usual suspects in the Democratic Party, I began to believe Obama represents a new approach. He gives off such a sense of relevance that he's sort of irresistible," Louis-Dreyfus said.

He also expressed exasperation about the tone of the Clinton campaign and frustration with the candidate. "At the end of the day, all she had to do was open her mouth for me not to believe her," Louis-Dreyfus said.

Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr. and Alec MacGillis contributed to this report.