Fernando Ferrer Tries to Mend Fences

After some slippage in the polls and a lot of negative public opinion, Democratic mayoral frontrunner, former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, explained that his words labelling Amadou Diallo's shooting "a tragedy but not a crime" were a "careless" mistake and that he'd have to live with it. He called Kadiatou Diallo, mother of the 1999 shooting victim, to explain but not quite apologize. To political pundits, the big thing was that Ferrer admitted his words had a cost, but given that Representative Charles Rangel just threw his support behind C. Virginia Fields and that Reverend Al Sharpton isn't interested in supporting, him, Gothamist wonders if it's too little too late. This must have been why Ferrer said his mayoral campaign wasn't driven by polls (which sounds very much like a Bloomberg stance!). He also added, "And if faced with a choice of losing an election or losing a sense of who you are, and what you have been, and what you have consistently stood for, I will lose the election." Why do these sound like famous last words to Gothamist?