A winner to whom?
Trying to keep the msm off him?
This is the second time he has rushed to decry the speech of someone he perceives to be to the right of him [that I know of].
While I can appreciate his desire to run in the middle and siphon as many votes from the center left as he can, he COULD have simply stfu.
So he hangs the NCGOP out to dry. I don’t find that particularly endearing.
But he also keeps the story alive by providing another angle for the coverage. IMHO, keeping the story alive is ‘a good thing’. It presents a continuing stream of ‘bad publicity’ for Obama, because the Wright association continues to be “out there” rather than “old news” (I don’t necessarily subscribe to the view that ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’). Also it gives plausible deniability (or, actual deniability) to McCain, so he gets to be a beneficiary of the story, whether or not he deserves to be.