Tension at MSNBC? Buchanan tells fellow guest to 'shut up' 
MSNBC's Dan Abrams has been keeping an informal scorecard on the Democratic primary, and he announced on Wednesday that he is ruling Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro's remarks about Barack Obama having an advantage because he is an African-American as a negative for Clinton.
"Whether the comments are racist or not, I'm sticking by my ruling from earlier this week that this is a blunder for the Clinton campaign," Abrams stated. "I just can't see how this helps the Clinton campaign in a Democratic primary."
Abrams' assertion led to a fierce dispute among his guests, with conservative Pat Buchanan -- who also works for MSNBC as a political commentator -- insisting that "I don't think it helps the Obama campaign now, either."
"Geraldine Ferraro is an icon of American woman," Buchanan pontificated.
"She's a heroine to feminists all over. And the fact that she's been driven out of this campaign and humiliated for something I think was utterly inoffensive, a simple statement of fact, I think it's going to hurt Obama in his effort to bring the party together."
Rachel Maddow of the liberal radio network Air America expressed amazement at Buchanan's remarks. "As much as I like Pat ... it's hard to hear you define the icons of feminism," she objected "I don't think that people are going to be mad about Geraldine Ferraro getting kicked out of the Clinton campaign for this. I think what she said was patently ridiculous. ... Like he's won some sort of black privilege lottery that we didn't know about before?"
Abrams pointed out that Ferraro was comparing Obama to herself and saying that she would not have been the Democratic nominee for vice-president in 1984 if she had not been a woman.
"The real crime in all this was not the initial statement, it's how she behaved afterwards," commented Democratic strategist Keli Goff, who is herself African-American. "To come back and say that she's the victim."
However, Buchanan remained determined to argue that Ferraro had made a simple statement of fact. "If Barack Obama thinks there's no correlation between the fact he's an African-American and his career has been so spectacular," Buchanan asserted, "he would be as delusional as George W. Bush saying the fact that he's president of the United States ... has nothing to do with the fact that the first George Bush was president of the United States."
Goff objected vehemently to Buchanan's comparison of "Barack Obama, who's a self-made individual, to someone like George W. Bush ... who achieved all his accomplishments on the strength of his father's name."
Buchanan then began reeling off the names of primary states in an attempt to prove that Obama owed his victories to his dominant position among African-American voters. When Goff attempted to counter his arguments, Buchanan snapped, "Shut up for a second, please."
"Don't talk to me like that, Pat," said the obviously shocked Goff. "That's inappropriate."
"I've never heard you tell anybody to shut up before," Maddow added. "That was absolutely, completely ridiculous of you."
Buchanan, apparently unabashed, continued to point to Obama's "enormous numbers" of African-American voters, so Goff suggested tartly, "Try being a black man for a day and see how well that works out for you. I'm sure you'll have a lovely time in America."
This video is from MSNBC's Live with Dan Abrams, broadcast March 12, 2008.
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