Jeremiah's train wreck
Michael Goodwin:
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.
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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. (Emphasis added.)
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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.
Obama knows this on one level as can be demonstrated by his flag props and his closing "God bless America," at the end of his speech. But in the middle he will not disown the American hating purveyor of black liberation theology. That may be OK for those inclined to be on his side anyway, but it will not be a winning position in the general election.
The good thing about this controversy is that it has exposed this corrosive theology that avoids responsibility by creating scapegoats instead of taking responsibility for ones own circumstances. It is a racist theology that deserves severe criticism.
Posted by Merv
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