REDSTATE ROUNDTABLE #8: Obama, Rev. Wright, and the Voters
The Contributors Take On The Hot Topic Of The Day
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Redstate Roundtable | Rev. Jeremiah Wright — Comments (31) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Dan McLaughlin: Three questions about Obama and Rev. Wright:
1. Did they coordinate this week's events to give Obama an excuse to make a clean break?
2. Has the Wright controversy, on its own or combined with Bittergate, Bill Ayers, Mrs. Obama, the flag pin flap, etc., inflicted an injury to Obama's campaign that will sooner or later be fatal even if more doesn't come out?
3. Is Obama going to suffer a net loss (which I would define as Hillary winning Indiana by at least as much as Obama wins NC) on May 6?
Discussion below the fold...
Adam C: 1) No, they did not coordinate. I will accept it as circumstantial evidence if Rev. Wright does not respond with a public event in the next week. But I suspect he will.
2) No, it is not fatal. It has taken Obama from "something new" to "same old thing." He's now Just Another Politician. But most years, just another politician wins. And this year, just another Democrat politician is favored. He can lose, but he's still the most likely winner in November.
3) No, Obama will win NC big (10+) and Hillary will win IN small (1-5). Plus, NC is larger and since this is all an argument about popular vote, even equal percentages would mean Obama gains in the popular vote. All that said, Hillary will win net popular votes in the rest of the states (WV, KY, PR will swamp OR, MT, SD).
Thomas Crown: 1. I believe they did not coordinate, largely because I think Wright is trying to shame Obama into speaking what they both believe to be the truth.
2. It's not fatal now. The fun part is what happens when non-D voters get to hear it again and again. And the best part is, Kitten isn't even fully vetted yet. Just Another Politician takes what edge Kitten had against a man the media has spent the last eight years treating as being Sliced Bread: The Sequel. If he becomes Just Another Northern Liberal, which I think he will, he's dead. We have the opportunity to truly transcend color this year by treating more-or-less black Barack Obama exactly the same as we treated Michael Dukakis.
Who needs a tank when the candidate is a treasure chest waiting to be opened?
Glorious.
3. I agree with Adam, and only disagree to note that Florida and Michigan are out there, waiting. Calling. Lurking. Ordering pizzas.
I love this country.
Paul Cella: 1. Doubtful, but not inconceivable.
2. Only if he fails to effect a separation from Wright sufficient to mollify guilt-stricken but somewhat annoyed moderate Liberals.
3. Yes -- supposing, of course, that Clinton has the cynicism and savvy to leverage the Wright controversy against him.
Dan McLaughlin: Well, to offer up my own answers:
1. What Paul said. Maybe, but I don't think Wright is the type to coordinate his own public denunciation.
2. I don't think Obama's fatally wounded yet, but the problem is that all this stuff taken together forms a coherent and very unpleasant narrative - Obama's statements and close associations are all entirely consistent with a man who never heard a bad thing about America that he felt it necessary to disagree with. I just don't think there's anywhere near a majority of Americans who could picture themselves being friends with Bill Ayers, or nodding along in church with the kind of stuff Rev. Wright peddles. And that's going to make people very uncomfortable with Obama, which is not at all the place he was two months ago.
3. I'm now thinking he's going to lose Indiana handily and win NC narrowly, and it will be hard to spin that as a victory. I still can't see the superdelegates abandoning him - I think they recognize that the long-term damage to the party from being seen as "robbing" the first credible African-American candidate of the nomination in a "backroom deal" would justify giving him the nomination even if they expect to lose. It would be wholly out of character for the Democratic party leadership to stand up to that sort of argument.
haystack: 1. no...but I bet they "chatted" about Barry planning to bail on his pastor after the trainwreck that was the NAACP speech...oh, to be a fly on the wall for THAT little chit-chat.
2. parsing the question..."if more doesn't come out", no. His fans consider the whole list of examples here as "us" just being mean and taking poor old Mr. Hope and Change out of context. Those that were wary are resolved to vote NO on Barry now, I think...but I can pretty much guarantee there will be more to come out. This cat has never been fully vetted. We have all the Bill years to beat up Hillary with-there has been almost NOTHING on his "community organizer" years...nothing juicy anyway, and besides...there's blood in the water-ya think Hillary! is gonna just move on to the next campaign stop? pfffffft...I don't. God but do I enjoy this :-)
3. I think Obama sees no appreciable difference thru the remaining primaries...Has this opened him up in the general for a full house of pain? Absolutement...IF, that is, our presumptive nominee decides to actually FIGHT to win the general of course...
Jeff Emanuel:
We have the opportunity to truly transcend color this year by treating more-or-less black Barack Obama exactly the same as we treated Michael Dukakis.
That was the best quote I've seen in a long, long time.
On the topic, I can't believe for a minute that Obama's campaign, who kicked off a fundraising drive based around a DVD of Obama's Wright-is-just-misunderstood-and-I-can't-disown-him speech just three hours before Wright's Monday morning appearance at the NPC, had any prior knowledge (or understanding) of what Wright was going to do, or about how it would be received by the American people and the media. Just like bittergate ("what!? people are bitter!"), Ayers ("these people are very respected in liberal Illinois politics!"), and Rev. Wright-part-One ("I can't disavow him, and he's a good guy anyway") demonstrated, Obama and his folks are simply far, far out of touch with middle America. They're right in line with those Chicago liberals, with the inhabitants of San Francisco's billionaire's row, and with extreme-fringe-lefties like Andrew Sullivan and the folks who write at DKos and MyDD; however, that clique makes up a tiny minority of the electorate. When there's a strong reaction to an insult directed from the Obama camp to a fundamental pillar of American life, the folks in the Red-and-Blue, hammer-and-sickle corner seem 100% mystified, and struggle for a significant amount of time with how to handle it.
As far as IN and NC go, I think Hillary wins IN by 8-10 and Obama wins NC by 6 or less (that last is a WAG, of course, and Adam C has a far better predictive track record than I). Obama is showing himself to be a far more flawed, untested, and rookie-mistake-making candidate than many originally believed, I think -- such as yesterday, when he called a hasty press-conference to disavow Rev. Wright twenty years late and $50,000 short. The biggest mistake? Not holding the press conference overall -- holding it during Rush Limbaugh's live radio show, allowing millions to hear his live commentary and analysis of the presser. Ouch.
Soren Dayton: 1. A net loss is any loss in IN. The badness of the loss is proportional to the closness in NC. Or more to the point, the the more polarized the NC white vote is, the worse it is for him.
2. Too soon to tell on how much damage. The key tactical question will be how much this focuses on why he did it now and what did he know and when. It is not plausible that he is just finding out what a paranoid racist Wright is now. There is a tremendous message synergy between what Obama did today and Wright's line about "Obama says what he says because he's a politician"
Shooting the preacher is about political expedience, not belief.
3. The press allows BO to whitewash, so he may get by with a day or two. But that means he gets his first positive message out ... Friday or Saturday. No good at all.
Moe Lane: In order:
1a). Tempting to think so, but it was too sloppy to be coordinated well. I can't for the life of me see why he'd be hawking a DVD of the speech about how he can't throw his pastor under the bus just before he throws a press conference announcing that he's throwing his pastor under the bus. Unless he's just dumb and/or nobody's able to tell him things that he doesn't want to hear any more. Which is very easily possible.
1b). Does this mean that he can cast aside his grandmother now, by the way?
2). No, but they'll all collectively take the blame for what was and is always the real problem for Obama - which is that Americans do not elect peaceniks President. Democrats simply have to learn to accept that their candidates need to credibly sound like they're both ready and eager to rip out our enemies' veins with their teeth.
3). Clinton will win Indiana, and unless Obama wins by 20 points the story will be about how his support cratered in the last week of the campaign. I'm going to guess that he's going to end up around +10, which will do bupkis for him with the super-delegates. If he wins by only 4 points or so, he's got problems. If he ties or loses - which I do not see happening - then roughly half of the Left 'sphere should start seriously considering either fleeing the country, or supporting John McCain in the general.
Mark Kilmer: 1. No, they did not coordinate; the idea is far too risky, and the execution beyond clumsy.
2. It won't stop his trip to the nomination, but Barry's going to be hammered relentless from now-'til-November. And afterwards, as we do our post-mortems on the end of "another brilliant career."
3. Nope. I think African American voters in NC will rally behind Barry in his "hour of need," and he'll win big. I don't think she'll win Indiana by anything resembling double-digits, and he might just pull another Iowa. Either way, their contest has been all over been the continued bleeding since February.
Dan Spencer: 1. I can't believe there was any conspiracy to coordinate Wright's resurrection.
2. There is enough stuff out there to paint Obama's "blank screen" as the extremist liberal/progressive he is. Obama's throwing Wright today, would have been much more believable if it had been said six weeks ago. Now, wink, wink, as Wright told the National Press Club on Monday, it sounds simply like the expedient politics it is.The Wright stuff took off because there was the video and the admittedly Obamania suffering mainstream media wasn't able to spin any effective denial of just how extreme Wright is. Obama's bomber, the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers still hasn't grabbed the public's attention because there is no Wright-like smoking gun videos. If Obama can eventually be tied to the unrepentant terrorist as he has been tied to Wright, well, with the patriotism issued raised by Mrs. Obama, the flag pin etc., I can't see him defeating McCain.
3. As for Indiana and North Carolina, Obama will suffer a net loss. There are now some willing to predict that Hillary will win both primaries. With Hillary, helped by the the mostly union funded American Leadership Project, holding her own in Indiana, polls showing her eating into Obama's substantial North Carolina Lead, and her endorsement from Governor Easley -- it will be a net loss for Obama.
Ben Domenech: 1. No - his campaign is more lucky than smart, and an attempted Wright story plant is just too Clintonian, frankly. Either way, that's irrelevant moving forward: it's now out of control. A Moyers interview I'll buy as a plant, but not an National Press Club appearance.
2. Not fatal, but "a hit, a very palpable hit." What the Wright controversy has really achieved is a complete eradication of the idea that Obama is a cross-cultural post-partisan uniter. Yes, he will get hammered on this stuff for the rest of the year; yes, he can easily be described as Dukakis, Kerry, and Carter rolled into one. The real question is, does this controversy and what it's told us about Obama mean that - as some are starting to argue - that Hillary would actually be a more formidable candidate for McCain to face in the fall? I'm not ready to say that yet, but it's possible.
3. No, I still think he wins NC by 8-9 points - he'll get a so-so boost out of it, with a major story being an even more racially divided base - but he's limping to Colorado at this point, and everybody knows it. Remember, Puerto Rico routinely gets 75-80% turnout, and there's no way he's going to make a dent there - if Clinton gets anything approaching an equal IN win and just carries the contests as she should, she might very well go to Denver with a slim popular vote lead even without Michigan. This will be a huge talking point for her.
Pejman Yousefzadeh: 1. If they coordinated, they were foolish because all this served to do was to take Obama off his basic message.
2. Not necessarily. But of course, none of this has done Obama any favors.
3. If I knew the answer to that, I would be at the racetrack on a daily basis.
Thomas Crown: Like Moe says, the Best Democratic Primary EVER.
Moe Lane: If they divvy up the MI delegates as per the last proposal suggested
...then there's no legitimate reason not to count Michigan in the popular vote total.
Erick Erickson: 1. There was no "active coordination," but I suspect there was a conversation. This man has been Obama's "spiritual advisor" and mentor for twenty years. Obama, his wife, and his kids all go to that church. He is, in Obama's words, a member of the family. It doesn't take active coordination to plan all of this. All it takes is a conversation and some strongly implied language between the two about what Barack needs to move beyond this.
2. I think it has coupled with the others. As Barack goes on, a pattern develops. The pattern shows Obama's willingness to surround himself with undesirables, deny they are undesirable until confronted by the facts, throw them under the bus denying he knew the facts, then confront the fact that he knew the facts all along. Obama has too little experience by which to judge him. We are forced to make a judgment based on his judgment, which is demonstrably lacking.
3. I think Obama takes it on the chin. He will still win North Carolina, but it will be close enough that the Clintons can portray it as a victory. He will lose Indiana. The delegate totals will be close enough that both will slug it out demanding super delegates take their side. It will be glorious. Clinton will win. Black voters and hippies will sit this one out.
streiff: I think the idea of a coordinated Obama-Wright action borders on the absurd. Being an Occam's Razor type of guy I think when the Wright story refused to go away Obama realized that his association with Wright was a major negative and did what any other politician would do to a long time friend, associate, or family member under similar circumstances: he tossed him under the bus. Wright, for his part, thinks that he's being unfairly maligned. Why shouldn't he? He's been preaching this noxious racialist booshwah for 20 plus years, he's the guy who convinced people that Obama was black enough, he's the guy who contributed the title to Obama's ghostwritten self-hagiography, and now, when the going gets tough he ends up with Michelin tracks on him. I think we'll be hearing a lot more from the Rev Wright.
How much this hurts Obama in the Democrat primary is anyone's guess, but I think it does hurt him. Even though a good portion of the Democrat base is still scratching its head in amazement that anyone is upset or concerned by Bittergate, Wright, and especially Ayers, I think it guarantees that Indiana will go for Hillary at a higher rate than she had expected and it will cost Obama votes in North Carolina. The take away from this should be that Obama can't win the most important Blue states. If it goes to a convention, a lot of superdelegates will be thinking about the ads their opponents will run in the fall if they do vote for Obama.
I think he has a sucking chest wound in terms of a general election campaign. I don't see how, absent some deus ex machina event, he recovers from this by November especially if Hillary campaigns until the convention. At a minimum his "new type of politician" schtick is dead and he'll be running as a sorta black (now that he's repudiated the guy how gave him the racialist cred he neeeded) George McGovern.
absentee: 1. I think Thomas is right as rain. Wright and congregants know Barack sat there for twenty years out of understanding, not ignorance. He sat there out of agreement. It's absurd the extent to which the man is surrounded by anti-American sentiment and vile thinking and yet still tries to place himself outside of it. These are the waters he swims in. Wright thinks he's right, and he thinks Barack thinks he's right. They aren't colluding, Wright is doing what any good kos-style Democrat would do. He's demanding validation and endorsement, and he's expecting his point of view to treated as the Word by a man he believes to be beholden to him.
2. In democrat circles this is hardly fatal. They wait with bated breath for some turn of phrase they can latch on to with religious fervor as 'the' definitive answer. Americabloggers were claiming the controvery "quelled" weeks ago, before the "We The People" speech, based on a few words at a press conference. His latest will no doubt be touted as the all-time superlative association-breaking of the universe. In the general, it depends on how well the Right side can illuminate the Obama world-view, Wright being a key part of that.
3. Have to defer to Adam C's insights on that one.
Mark I: As the originator of the conspiracy theory on this board, I obviously think that Obama and Wright had some kind of arrangement. I can't prove coordination, of course, but I agree with Erick that there was a whole lot of winking and nodding going on.
As to streiff's point that Obama realized that Wright was a drag on the camapign and threw him under the bus, he didn't actually do that until this week. In his Philadelphia speech, Obama said that Wright was a "part of me," and that he, "could no more denounce him than I could denounce the black community." That's not throwing Wright under the bus, that's drawing closer to him.
Now at some point, Obama did realize that Wright was a drag on the campaign, and that point was right after Pennsylvania. Bittergate hurt Obama a lot with rural, white, working-class voters in that state and he needed to do something to reach out to them. This new Wright flare up is just the thing.
Has all the controversy hurt Obama? I think that fact is evident in the fact that we are having this discussion. Prior to Wright and Bittergate, Obama was seen as above all this type of cynical political maneuvering. Now more people than us are wondering whether Obama could be involved in a political conspiracy worthy of any adjectives ever attributed to Karl Rove by the left. He's been brought down to Earth. I have maintained that that has always been his campaign's Achilles heel. Once he is shown to be a regular politician, he will lose most of his attractiveness. That process is now virtually complete.
Obama will win North Carolina in a squeaker, and lose Indiana by 10 points.
haystack: An illuminating article, written for a wholly different reason, has a hilarious apologentia for explaining WHY Obama and Wright were ever associated...and why it was a good and necessary thing:
"the most obvious explanation of his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers: after Obama graduated from college he became an inner-city organizer in Chicago, and they were natural allies for someone in a situation like that. We routinely demonize organizations like the United Nations that we desperately need and which are critical to missions like nation-building in Afghanistan."
Barry's inner-city Chicago version of the UN necessarily brings him together with "unsavory characters" so he can get done the dirty work of helping people...heh-
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REDSTATE ROUNDTABLE #8: Obama, Rev. Wright, and the Voters 31 Comments (0 topical, 31 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I saw a link today about the Rezko trial. In it there was a witness saying that, Rezko said that Hastert/Rove were gonna get the prosecutor so Rezko wouldn't have to worry. Has anybody else heard about this, and are we in for a Scooter part Deux situation here? Thanks.
Aaron
"Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper" Peter Griffin...Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity....or else!!!
"Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper" Peter Griffin...Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity....or else!!!
It's time for Conservatives to stop this obsession with the Rev. Wright stuff. I think we have rung all of the juice from the towel and we're still acting like it's news. Sean Hannity is so relentless that he will not even allow guests to come to their own observations when he asks them their opinion as he imposes his never ending drum beat.
We can use this stuff against Obama but if we can't beat him on the issues we might as well start watching ESPN.Let's save some of this passion for getting John Mc Cain in line because believe me we are going to need it.
There is a bigger issue concerning all this piling on Rev. Wright and the Watergate approach to Obama (when did he know and what did he know).
We need to think what it is doing to polarize the races and those seeds are being sown now and it doesn't matter if the Clintons started it or not. The deleterious effect on society will by felt by everyone. Now for all you hard heads out there I am not saying the situation doesn't bear criticism rather I'm talking about piling on for weeks when we should be focusing on bigger issues to defeat either Democrat.
Sounds familiar -- but not from allies.
By the way,
"Sean Hannity is so relentless that he will not even allow guests to come to their own observations when he asks them their opinion as he imposes his never ending drum beat."
That sounds like Hannity every day, on every issue. What's new?
I soured on that guy a long time ago, including his radio show. For exactly that reason - debate by use of the mute button.
Kill the terrorists
Protect the borders
Punch the hippies -- Frank J
Frank Rizzo character huffing helium.
In the Cold Light of Day this conversation is wonderful for opinion value and I value everyone's opinion, but it is meaningless. In the Cold Light of Day, the people who are going to decide this nomination are superdelegates who aren't talking or who have already made up their minds, or who don't want to be on the wrong side.
In the Cold Light of Day it couldn't matter less whether Jeremiah Wright is an honest pastor honestly representing the Black Nation in Chicago (which I think he is -- those are honestly the the views of a lot of people in his flock) or whether he's a pariah who is kneecapping Obama or what -- it's not the substance of what he has said: it is the perception of what he has said that matters. And when the superdelegates have decided that what the perception of what he has said is OK for them, they will vote for Obama. In fact, they will vote for Obama anyway, because he was preordained.
Obama is going to be the nominee. His pastor could get up on stage and hoist a banner with Karl Marx behind him while Obama stood at his side and snorted a line of coke off the podium, and it wouldn't matter one whit.
Barack Obama is God.
http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=2955
Obama Calls Elitist Charge 'Gauche' and 'Droll'
(2008-04-24) — Responding to remarks by presidential candidate John McCain suggesting he’s an ‘elitist‘, Sen. Barack Obama today called the accusation 'gauche' and 'droll'.
“First of all, it’s très gauche and a bit bourgeois to banter about elitism at all,” said Sen. Obama, “It simply isn’t done in polite society — not among my chums from Harvard Law School or Columbia University, and certainly not in the Senate cloak room or the finer salons.”
Speaking to reporters from behind the iron gate of his nearly $2 million mansion in the historic Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago, the twice-published author noted, “It’s quite droll that my wealthy senate colleague has the gall to besmirch my reputation by suggesting I can’t relate to the hoi polloi. Me? An elitist? Why, if I weren’t such a good sport, I’d challenge Sen. McCain to a duel with rapiers.”
I agree that the superdelegates are going to give Obama the nomination in the end, regardless of what happens in these remaining primaries.
But it's not because they worship Obama.
It's because they fear the reaction from the black community if they don't.
This is one time where many urban blacks won't come back into the fold and vote for the Dem nominee anyway on Election Day. Not after some of the things Hillary said, and the obvious polarization in the electorate--Hillary is winning with almost no support from black voters.
And yet, that's not even the worst case scenario.
The worst case scenario is civil unrest. Al Sharpton already threatened to "shut New York down" to protest that court verdict last week. What will he do if blacks perceive that Hillary "stole" the nomination from Obama?
And how about the Nation of Islam? Those NoI "security guards" that surrounded Reverend Wright didn't look too friendly either.
Democrats are terrified of that possibility, because they remember the disastrous Democratic convention of 1968 and how that ruined their electoral chances for years. They also remember the riots after the Rodney King verdict in 1992.
Now that the far left youngsters have largely abandoned the barricades for the blogs, nobody fears violence from them anymore. But black militants are the one cohort where the fear of violence constantly lurks in the background.
So the superdelegates are going to be intimidated into nominating Obama.
Badly done and seems to have opened up a whole new round of questions.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Those are the honest views of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and they are also the honest views of a lot of people in Chicago, Illinois. He was telling the truth. That's the way people really think there.
I'm going to tell you right now that despite what Barack Obama is saying by distancing himself from Jeremiah Wright's most recent comments, that's political theater.
Barack Obama is going to be a very, very good disciple of Jeremiah Wright if he is elected President. I'm quite sure that people haven't realized who they're about to elect. But they're gonna find out.
early on I thought he was an empty suit, a zero who knew nothing and had no idea what he was doing.
In the past few weeks I've changed my opinion. I still think he's an empty suit but I now think he is a very, very dangerous man who knows precisely what he wants to accomplish and it isn't good for America. I think he, and his wife, are far more cunning than even his acolytes on the left give him credit for and that their plans for this country are very seriously twisted.
Among some of the things could well may be on the early agenda are: a formal national apology for slavery and a formal monetary reparations program; a serious radicalization of the left; a withdrawal from most, if not all, of our independent and/or bilateral international arrangements and an attempt to make US military forces subservient to the UN; involvement of an unarmed US military in every possible "humanitarian" action around the world; cancellation of the missile defense program; cancellation or mothballing of significant parts of the US fleet and reductions of US land and air forces; absolute abandonment of Israel in favor of radical Islamist groups; an end to the War on Terrorism and US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan; impementation of a gigantic federal "Global Warming" program; continued, and perhaps even further, restrictions on US energy supplies; appointment to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary of radical leftists.
And these may be only the tipof the iceberg. You may well wake up one morning in the not too distant future and not recognize what used to be the United States of America.
John
----------
Why would God invent something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
How about a little fun with that in a future thread?
I believe that Obama is basically using the same strategy that Clinton ran in 92. The only difference is instead of having a few token R's on his team that are expendable he has chosen to pander to the far left. Wright is someone he can have on his side while still being distanced. Wright will continue to say things like "he is doing what politicians do". This will help Obama with the far left while still maintaining the distance he needs. Clinton got elected by acting conservative(loose interpretation of the term) during a conservative time. Obama is betting(incorrectly) that the tide has turned and he believes he can win with the D's and the whacked out left. The only problem is Obama has confused the volume of the lefts voice with their actual volume
"Land of the Free and Home of da Whopper" Peter Griffin...Family Guy
conform and celebrate diversity....or else!!!
I think what happened was this:
Wright and Obama together, as a team, believed that the public could be convinced that Wright was not such a bad fellow. It was to be the March "racism" speech, phase two. The Bill Moyers interview, NAACP speech, National Press Club gig -- all of these would show that Wright was mainstream.
Or rather, Wright and Obama together would try to pull the country in their direction. "Isn't the true violence failing to redistribute wealth?" and that sort of thing.
But then, Wright began to talk. And Obama read the tea leaves.
More importantly, Wright said that Obama was just doing what politicians do (that is, he was lying for votes). Wright wasn't lifting himself out of the hole his own political incorrectness put him in, he was dragging Obama there with him.
So, Obama cut the rope.
--
Gone 2500 years, still not PC.
2. I don't think Obama's fatally wounded yet, but the problem is that all this stuff taken together forms a coherent and very unpleasant narrative - Obama's statements and close associations are all entirely consistent with a man who never heard a bad thing about America that he felt it necessary to disagree with....
Maybe Obama's defense could have been: "Nothing he ever said is worse than anything I hear on a daily basis from Michelle."
This whole thing about the Revenend Wright makes me gag. I'm sick of him, his stupid preachings; the constant reruns on Fox, CNN and others of the damn snippets of him dancing at the pulpit and spewing his nonsense, not to mention the endless commentary; the sound bytes of his rants on the radio; and every other stupid assinine thing associated with him. I'm also tired of people on talk radio talking about him endlessly. We have a moron that preached hate on a regular basis, to four or five hundred other morons that wanted to listen to him, and now we have tens of millions of people exposed to his stupidity (we really needed this?). His appearance at the National Press Club wasn't the biggest problem at that event, it was the standing room only of blacks and whites cheering him on that made me fume, and hardly anyone mentions it.
We all got it; he's a hate monger, and anyone that thinks like him is one also. But we don't need to spend weeks on end talkig about him. He's not the first, he won't be the last. I think there are more important issues then the Reverend Wright, and I just wish we got back to talking about them. If we continue to let this moron capture our fascination, rather then focusing on strengthening John McCain for the general, Hillary Clinton will be our next president.
Obama is still a stronger opponent than Clinton, though thankfully the Wright farce increases the chances of beating him. If Clinton manages to wrest the nomination from Obama (unlikely put possible), a significant part of the Democratic Party's hate constituency will regard her nomination as a stab in the back and feel that getting defeated by McCain would serve her and the Democratic Party right. Of course it's idiotic from their ideological perspective to prefer having McCain as president, but idiots are a core Democratic constituency.
The Democratic base, including almost all the Clinton supporters, will come out for Obama in the general election. His ties to Wright will alienate the moderate swing voters, and neither party can win a national election without getting at least a large minority of those voters. That's why we need Wright to become an indelible part of voters' image of Obama.
- I'm sick of him, his stupid preachings; the constant reruns on Fox, CNN and others of the damn snippets of him dancing at the pulpit and spewing his nonsense...
There is a saying in the advertising business that about the time you think people must be getting sick of your ad, they are just starting to notice it. Sure, we political junkies would be happy to never hear another word about Wright. But trust me, Wright is just beginning to leave tire tracks on Senator Obama. He could easily run over Obama and back up to do it again another dozen times, all to good effect.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
I wish "people" (I guess pundits and us) would talk more about Sen. Obama's judgment and decisions instead of about Rev. Wright's views. As you said, everyone knows he is a hateful, bitter conspiracy theorist. So stop talking about that.
But Sen. Obama has run a campaign that was based not on his record or his past actions, but no his "judgment." Choosing to join the church, staying at the church, and defending Rev. Wright initially all seem to point toward questions about his judgment.
Is this the type of person we want meeting with Kim Jong-Il or the Iranian President. He wants to jump right into one-on-one talks with those characters. If he didn't know the "real" Rev. Wright after 20 years, should we trust him to represent us to these dictators?
______________________________________
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Democrats simply have to learn to accept that their candidates need to credibly sound like they're both ready and eager to rip out our enemies' veins with their teeth.
And this is why Hillary has the advantage over Obama with "Reagan Democrat" type voters, despite her impeccable liberal background:
Because everyone across the political spectrum--everyone--agrees that Hillary is both ready and eager to rip out HER enemies' veins with her teeth.
Her enemies have traditionally included: Republicans; conservatives; the far left; the news media; and many others.
But we sense that she's willing to include Osama bin Laden and Ahmedinijad on her enemies' list too. So her implicit message is: "If you thought what I did to those Republicans was something, wait till you see what I'm going to do to al-Qaeda!"
or even the common shrew, she would start in with "You think men have the monopoly on military courage? I can't match Senator McCain's honorable service, but I am more than a match his ferocity on defense. If you've ever seen a mother defend her young, you will know how I will act when called on to defend my country."
Or something like that.
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Gone 2500 years, still not PC.
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Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.
I just wish the Reverend will go away (preferably on a S-L-O-W boat to China) and that he will take BUBBA Clinton with him!
With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see right.
but I have lost my patience with Obama, Rev. Wright, and, as my wife likes to put it, BILLARY. The entire Democrat setup this season is painfully mediocre. That includes most of the candidates, the Congressional leadership, and those mentioned above. Billy Ayers gets an exemption, but only because he was once a man of (unfortunate and illegal) action (who has become a man of too many words).
But we're here, mon, so we have to secure are snorkeling gear and dive into the muck to see it so we can come to the surface and describe the middling antics from rusty minds.
I've more a velleity than an overwhelming need for this, though.
THEN AGAIN, it's probably the PM hour talking.
Ground Control to Vis Numar...
1. No
2. Yes
3. Hillary wins Indiana by double digits, and NC by a narrower margin -- maybe 4-5%.
This episode has revealed Obama as both weak and duplicitous.
The problem for Dems is that the default is Clinton -- tough and duplicitous.
Yes...I will have some more popcorn..thanks..
great discussion!
that if Obama didn't get the nomination, made an "eloquent moving", speech endorsing Hillary and strode nobly back to the senate for four eight years while trimming his politics a little to the centre, he'd be fairly unbeatable.
He'd walk the primaries as his supporters would be on about the 'stolen' nomination and thus he could campaign to the centre where the general election is won. The negatives from 2008 would be buried in the past and he could have patched up the gaps in his resume.
So lets hope he gets the nomination now, I guess.
You guys put the lie to the axiom that nothing good comes out of committee. I'm still with Adam that Obama has the upper hand, but it's much closer to the other hands now.
And Ben, your Hamlet quote ("a hit, a very palpable hit") made me laugh, as I'm currently in a production of the Reduced Works of William Shakespeare: Hamlet. We actually run Laertes through with a sword when he confesses to taking the second hit.
No one of good character leaves behind a wasted life - John McCain