If by theatre, you mean the entire thing with Wright going out there this weekend, then Obama dissing him, I don’t think so.
The big immediate question to ask is how this affects Indiana (it’s assumed he will crush her in NC).
First, the black vote: Obama has 97% of the black male vote and 93% of the black female vote, but that doesn’t mean he’d be willing to sacrifice any of them—especially after losing PA by just under 10%. The black vote is also crucial in Indiana. Maybe he thinks he can do no wrong with the black community. So we can assume that with the black community, dissing Wright is a wash or, at worst, perhaps he loses 5% of the black vote (which presumably will stay home in IN and NC rather than go with Hillary).
The real issue is whether he gains any points with white working class voters. He absolutely needs these in order to take Hillary in Indiana. I don’t see how he does this on the Wright thing because too many of these voters are already convinced Obama is a fake and they are able to see that his condemnation is too over the top to be believable given the known context of the Obama-Wright relationship over 20 years (”the lady doth protest too much, methinks”).
I personally think Wright was a loose cannon who saw an opportunity to get on the national stage. I am convinced that he did what he did this past weekend in order to bring converts to the chruch and sell DVDs—he couldn’t care less about Obama’s political aspirations and besides, an Obama loss just feeds into his conspiracy theories.
Obama had to do the Henry V thing on Wright at this point, because Wright was just too over the top and too high profile. Most annoying to Obama (and I take his word on this), was Wright’s saying that Obama’s previous dissing of Wright was just political expediency. I really do think Obama was pissed about that one in particular. No; this was genuine damage control—too little too late, perhaps, but I don’t think Obama planned it. The irony is that he was done in by a radical black preacher.
That said, I don’t buy the idea that Obama is suddenly shocked to find out that he’s been a member of a Black Liberation church, however, so in that sense I’d agree that that part of his press conference is just theater.
If you listen to what Wright really said during his presser...he essentially said, Obama’s message is my message. He referred to his own “We can do it” sermon (which Wright said several times during his Press Club speech), and said...ah yes, where have we heard that and then repeated Obama’s campaign slogan “YES WE CAN”. That is a point I believe is being missed in the coverage thus far.