Wambsgans/APRev. Jeremiah Wright
Posted on 03/23/2008 6:40:53 AM PDT by SJackson
Sunday, March 23rd 2008, 4:00 AM
Wambsgans/APRev. Jeremiah Wright
Despite their frantic efforts to one-up each other on issues large and small, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could soon find themselves sharing the same unhappy burden: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Unless one of them can find the courage and the sense to forcefully denounce the black pastor, Clinton and Obama both could end up watching John McCain get elected President.
Midway through the second week of the Wright fiasco, and five days after Obama tried to cool the boiling issue with an important speech on race, it is increasingly clear we are witnessing a Democratic train wreck. For months, the collision has been unfolding in slow motion as the closely fought campaign worked its way across the country and the chances for a clear winner slipped away one state at a time.
Suddenly, the wreck is happening at full speed. The dream team is looking like a nightmare.
Race was always a touchy subject, but not the dominant one, at least on the surface. Now there is no other issue.
With only 10 contests left, the campaign is turning on Wright's outlandish anti-American statements and Obama's tepid reaction to them. Obama seems flummoxed by the complexities of the racial polarization he promised to heal and the party is being divided in a way that could sink him. He's even making things worse for himself as his silver tongue has gotten tied in knots.
Polls in Pennsylvania and nationally show that Obama's otherwise-thoughtful speech last week failed to solve the political problem Wright created. Whites are shifting to Clinton or, in hypothetical general election matchups, to McCain.
For those voters, Wright is a clear yes or no question. Trying to split the difference, however amiably, as Obama did by rejecting Wright's most inflammatory comments while also sympathetically explaining them and equating them to white frustrations, created a muddle that has reinforced doubts about Obama's convictions and values.
In the short run, Clinton obviously benefits in the nomination fight. But she shouldn't get too comfortable. For Obama's problems with Wright will become her problems if she makes the same mistake of not being forceful enough about her own values. The same kinds of voters - working-class whites in swing states - who are shunning Obama will abandon her if she takes the standard, Democratic, politically correct course and coddles Wright and his poison.
As well they should. You can't be a President if you won't stand up to an anti-American bigot. More to the point, you can't become President by running against the country or having people around you who hate it.
It's a bright-line and the right answer is for Clinton to denounce Wright for saying, among other things, that the American government created the HIV virus to wipe out "people of color." So far, Clinton has ducked the test.
Instead, her campaign is said to be quietly arguing to superdelegates that Wright makes Obama unelectable against McCain. That's true. But Wright also will make Clinton unelectable if she can't stand up against him.
Of course, if she does, she could win the nomination but lose much of the key black vote for the general election. She is thus damned if she does and damned if she doesn't.
Although Obama leads in overall delegates and the popular vote, neither he nor Clinton will get the 2,025 majority of delegates without a big infusion of uncommitted superdelegates. That makes the remaining contests, starting with Pennsylvania on April 22, crucial in terms of momentum as well as delegates and total votes.
Clinton has a big lead there and Obama has compounded his Wright problem with more sloppy language. Trying to explain what he meant in the Tuesday speech by his reference to his late white grandmother's expressions of racial stereotypes, he called her comments those of a "typical white person." Even though his campaign rushed to "clarify" the remark, his words further undermine his calls for a postracial future.
If there is such a thing as a "typical white person," is there also a "typical black person"? And is Jeremiah Wright typical? What would grandma say to that?
As for McCain, he was off in Europe and the Mideast, meeting heads of state and dealing with global issues. As contrasts go, he couldn't hope for a better one. With his opponents stuck in the muck of race and gender politics, he looked like a man serious about being President.
I’m bracing myself for something like the 1992 L.A. riots if and when Obama loses.
I just can't see how either Clinton or Obama are going to defuse this type of racist behavior without turning the “black base” against them.
Guess it is time to put some popcorn on the cooker.
But instead they decided it was a great idea to coddle the bigots in their own party. They ousted all the white segregationist bigots and added Black, Hispanic, homosexual, and feminist bigots. They made them all prominent. They replaced one form of bigotry for another, and now they're so sad. Boo,hoo,hoo. Couldn't happen to nicer bunch or creeps. (smirk)
“I’m bracing myself for something like the 1992 L.A. riots if and when Obama loses.”
You can bet it will happen if that comes to pass - except much worse.
Super delegates got to be going bonkers
Hillary or Obama ?????????
Picking Obama will be a diaster for the WH run
BUT
Picking Hillary will lose the black vote in Nov which the dems absolutely have to have especially for the senate seats etc
We could all be history’s witness to the early development and emergence of race-based political parties, wherein the parties are segregated along strict racial lines with the emphasis directed toward crossover converts.
If in the next 4 weeks, Clinton can turn this thing into a White Vesus Black race, she can win the lions share of the remaining primary’s and capture the popular vote lead. Then what???????
Bob Dole could've beaten the Dims, this go-around.
“Can’t we all just get along?” ....HAH!!!
“He’s even making things worse for himself as his silver tongue has gotten tied in knots.”
Sounds like another “Slick Willie” Democrat to me.
Or the 1968 riots.
For blacks, It must be heartbreaking watching him implode.
On the other hand, he is half white, so maybe Rev Write is taking some joy in watching a privileged Harvard “Half Cracker” go down.
Obamas chickens are comin home ...... home to roooost.
I guess its half Obamas fault that we created the Aids virus. I hope he feels at least half guilty.
I think if I were Hillary, I would be asking Obama what does he mean by the term “typical white person”.
Loses the nomination or the presidency?
Minus another extraordinary revelation about Obama- I think he’ll get the nomination. In the end- as unelectable as the DNC must realize he is now- it’s hard to imagine them willingly splitting the party in a way that would be viewed as racist. They’re in a pickle.
It seems impossible now for him to get the oval office. Wright may succeed in mobilizing our base as much as Hillary would.
If Obamma Lamma Ding Dong fails to get the democrat nod there will be trouble in the streets. God help Denver if the super delegates give it to her at the convention,
But If he gains the nomination then gets his big eared skinny ass kicked in the general there will not be trouble just disappointment on his side.
The presidency.
Late grandmother? I thought his grandmother was alive and being held incommunicado in a high rise condo in Hawaii.
“But If he gains the nomination then gets his big eared skinny ass kicked in the general there will not be trouble just disappointment on his side.”
I don’t know. I think in either event, they’ll balme it on Whitey.
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