Posted on 03/20/2008 6:28:31 PM PDT by blam
Hillary Clinton's campaign uses pastor scandal to undermine Barack Obama
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 12:55am GMT 21/03/2008
Hillary Clinton's campaign has seized on the fallout from the furore over Barack Obama's pastor to argue that her Democratic rival would be dangerously vulnerable in a presidential election against John McCain.
While ordering staff not to comment directly on the controversy surrounding the inflammatory black liberation rhetoric of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, senior Clinton aides have privately made the case to Democratic officials that nominating Mr Obama would be a reckless gamble.
Watch: Obama's race speech | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Their aim is to convince "super-delegates" - senior party officials who have a say in who is to be the Democratic nominee - to overturn the verdict of the pledged delegates, allocated by vote totals.
Mr Obama's lead of 168 pledged delegates is all but insurmountable in the remaining 10 contests.
The Clinton campaign has claimed on its website that Mr Obama himself conceded he was less electable than Mrs Clinton by telling CNN: "In some ways this, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates."
Debate about the comments has continued to rage despite Mr Obama's powerful and well-received speech on Tuesday on race, given in reaction to outrage over newly-broadcast videos of Mr Wright's sermons.
Although Mr Obama said in the address he had "heard remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in the church" he has so far not specified what these remarks were and whether he challenged Mr Wright about any of them.
Mr Obama has said he was not present for and had not known about Mr Wright's call to "God damn America", his depiction of his country as the "US of KKK" or blaming the US government for giving blacks the Aids virus.
After the sermons were broadcast, Mr Wright stepped down from the Obama campaign's "African-American Religious Leadership Committee".
Mr Obama became the undisputed Democratic front-runner after his string of 11 primary victories in February,
However, opinion polls indicate that Mrs Clinton has gained ground since she won Ohio and Texas elections on March 4th. It is unclear how much Mr Obama's association with Mr Wright, his pastor for 17 years, has damaged him.
A new Gallup poll indicated that Mrs Clinton had regained her national advantage over Mr Obama for the first time in a month, leading by 49 per cent to 42 per cent. This represents a 13-point swing towards the former First Lady in under a fortnight.
Clinton aides have parried any attempts to be drawn into talking about Mr Wright beyond Mrs Clinton's anodyne remark that approved of the speech, which Mr Obama's advisors said he penned personally.
When asked whether the Wright affair was responsible for his poll slippage, Mark Penn, Mrs Clinton's chief strategist, said that "you can't pick out any single issue".
Some close allies of Mrs Clinton, however, have criticised the speech.
The Clinton campaign claimed Mr Obama has conceded he is less electable than she is
Geraldine Ferraro, who resigned from the Clinton campaign recently after saying that Mr Obama was only winning the Democratic race because he was black, said she was outraged to have been cited in the same breath as Mr Wright.
"To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable," she told the Daily Breeze newspaper. "He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred."
Lanny Davis, a Clinton loyalist and friend of the former First Lady since 1970, directed two pointed questions at Mr Obama in an internet article.
The first was whether Mr Obama would support a candidate who was the member of a congregation led by a white racist minister and the second whether he would support a candidate who has appointed a white racist minister as an adviser.
If Mr Obama would not answer the questions now, Mr Davis said, he would be required to answer them in a contest against Mr McCain, the Republican nominee, in November.
Duh. And Obama-lama-ding-dong's people will use whatever they can to undermine Shrillary.
That's politics. And there are no rules.
We may have really dodged a bullet here. To think that a person who actually is a card carrying admitted Marxist and who also attended a “church” for 20 years which believes that whites should be exterminated (that extermination would eventually include hispianics) almost slid by and got a major party nomination.... heck he still might seeing as how self-destructive the Rats are. I shudder.
i’m certain we’ll never hear the end of the comeback kid nonsense... barak had it in the bag... big boob
Obama's Grandmother: "Typical White Person"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxmEz8H33ZI
(A small analysis at the end by yours truly)
Great video!!
Well now, what’s this blam?
blog:
http://images.politico.com/global/clintonwright2.jpg
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/Jeremiah_Wright_was_White_House_guest.html
###
blog:
“Awesome: Wright was an invited guest of the Clintons at the White House”
POSTED AT 8:28 PM ON MARCH 20, 2008 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
ping to post no. 11.
Thanks!
Wow, the Einsteins at the Telegraph figured that out. Without the Telegraph’s deep, probing investigative skills, we’d all be in the dark. Thank you English journalists, for all the genuises telling us what’s going on here in America.
If the Telegraph had only been around in 1783, Cornwallis could have cut off the 1st Marine Division from rescuing Gen. George Washington from Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.
Blacks will sit out or vote out of spite for McCain.
Wright said Bill was “ridin’ dirty!” I guess he had personal experience.
I’m glad Her Heinous is doing it; that way, McCain doesn’t have to ! ;o)
I only looked at your last link Cindy, but wondering if that visit to the Clinton WH had anything to do with the recently reported support by that church for the FALN clemencies.
“...had anything to do with the recently reported support by that church for the FALN clemencies.”
OPINION:
That’s a good question and I don’t know the answer to it.
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