Rapper’s Remark Raises Tensions Between Clinton, Sanders Camps

Rapper Killer Mike, left, and IL state Rep. La Shawn Ford, right, listen as Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a round table meeting with local activist and community members in Chicago in December. “Just wait awhile.’ ‘Hold on, young people in this country, just wait awhile, ‘” the rapper said to a crowd at Morehouse College in Atlanta on Tuesday evening, criticizing Clinton’s record on criminal justice and race. What’s particularly ironic about his speech is male politicians have been telling women to “hold on” for centuries and wait their turn, too. On the other hand, arguably the history of this country has been people standing together to vote for men, and a demonstrated, historically-based awareness of that can’t hurt.

During his remarks, Killer Mike relayed a recent conversation with an activist named Jane Elliott, whom he said told him: “A uterus doesn’t qualify you to be president of the United States”.

The rapper said the Vermont Senator is the only candidate whose social policy lines up with Martin Luther King Jr.’s focus on the poor minorities.

The rapper, whose real name is Michael Render, suggested at a rally before 4,800 people at Morehouse College that Clinton would be slow to move on issues of racial justice.

Killer Mike cited a prominent female supporter of Sanders, former Ohio State Sen.

Alas, the backlash was abundant, and Killer Mike went on Twitter to explain his use of the quote.

I talked with Mike just minutes before he went on stage and uttered those words.

The implication, of course, is that Clinton isn’t qualified to be president based on her actual accomplishments, and that her supporters have only rallied behind her because she’s a woman-specifically, one with a uterus.

“But i don’t and never will Hate or think less of woman. Sen”.

But the comments by these two elder stateswomen reflect a division, noted by The New York Times, between younger and older women over Clinton.

“So I just asked to cut Bernie out”, she said. “If we get a large voter turnout I believe we will win”. Steinem accused women who back Sanders of doing so to get boys, for which she mostly apologized. But Sanders said she won’t be like her rival Democratic political spouse, former President Bill Clinton, who has at times gone negative about his wife’s opponent.