The OttO Show

The real presidential race for Democrats at this point is between Hillary Clinton and Pastor Wright.

What I think is the most interesting question at this point (and one that I wish were being asked more) is for Barack Obama supporters who were practically goaded by Obama into defending Jeremiah Wright for the past six weeks: who are you philosophically aligned with? Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama?

Someone tapped Obama on the shoulder recently and pointed out that Wright was sinking his campaign. And Obama has taken a step toward turning his back on his white grandma and the black community. In other words, he is turning his back on his mentor.

This is where Barack Obama should fire the entire hierarchy of his campaign staff who apparently couldn’t/didn’t inform him some time ago that Reverend Wright was going to be a problem and who couldn’t/didn’t convince him since that he had to make a swift and decisive break. Obama has evolved from not knowing about Wright’s crazy side to not agreeing with it to finally, flat out refuting and rejecting it.

I’ve read and had numerous exchanges with Obama supporters in recent weeks over this ‘pastor disaster’. There were basically two camps: those who didn’t care for Wright’s rhetoric but felt that Obama wouldn’t or shouldn’t be hurt by it or react strongly to it and those who agreed with or defended Wright’s tirades. I’m particularly interested in the second group: now that Obama has (a little late) specifically and clearly clobbered some of Wright’s expressed points of view, who are you going to stand with?

One of the more lame defenses of Wright were the arguments that “snippets” were being taken out of context. Unfortunately, the more these “snippets” expanded, the more clear the context was becoming.

Following that argument was the position that the media focused on a couple of sermons and ignored the bulk of Jeremiah Wright’s body of work. Conservative talk-show host Michael Medved claims to have spent hours pouring over the sermons of Wright including transcripts and the available DVD’s of Wright’s sermons sold by the UTCC. Medved acknowledged that Wright’s “Audacity of Hope” speech was beautiful but revealed that virtually every other sermon he could access featured extreme and radical passages. So according to people who have no knowledge of Wright’s deliveries, the media-relied sermons are contrary to what most of Wright’s sermons are. To a person who’s actually researched it, those sermons didn’t stray far from the norm.

So is Wright really right? Which would make Obama…wrong? Where do you stand? Is it principle over person? If Wright is rallying for the oppressed and the victimized, if he is exposing or challenging an evil and corrupt government and Obama has come out as a contrarian to Wright’s radical statements - doesn’t that make Obama part of the problem, as Wright and his defenders define it?

Obama’s campaign has been the ‘race-card campaign’. Obama has been struggling to maintain credibility among white voters since this controversy emerged. Now he stands to lose credibility among black voters, the “community” who he said he could never turn his back on in the same manner that he could never turn his back on Jeremiah Wright. Let’s be honest here: this week’s change of heart for Obama (in which he essentially told Wright, ‘don’t call me; I’ll call you’) was an attempt to salvage his white support.

In a way, this is a calling for the “black community”. Wright supporters have made it clear that he is speaking the truth, that he is reflecting what blacks think and that this is the status quo of the black church. Will we than see a significant drop in black support for Obama? Or will they shrug off his denunciation of Wright and continue to rally behind Obama? In other words, how many black voters has Obama offended this week?

Reverend Wright could have laid low. He could have toned it down until November. He could have turned his notoriety into a campaign tool. He instead chose to reopen the flood gates. With his remarks about Obama’s relunctant original denunciation of his past comments being nothing more than something he had to say as a politician, he forced Obama to publicly divorce him and his insane claims and ideas.

The final position on behalf of Obama and Wright that I think is important to reflect on is the notion that we shouldn’t even be wasting our time talking about this. Unfortunately for those people, this is a very real and important political scandal. It goes to the heart of what every presidential campaign is about: judging the candidate. This is about character and judgment. Obama has failed those tests. He didn’t denounce Wright at some point over the years when Wright was trashing his country and inciting racial division. He didn’t even denounce Wright when the story hit nationwide. He has only come around to denouncing Wright once the good pastor became a clear threat to his campaign.

Hurting the country is okay. Hurting Obama is not.

And hurt Barack HUSSEIN Obama (Wright’s emphasis, not mine) is what Wright has done and will continue to do, peddling his book to the masses. Wright can’t lose. He will become one of the most famous people in the country and will make gobs of money off of this. And all he has to do is periodically provide a photo make or claim to conversations with or statements by Obama that will keep his own pre-book buzz in the air while flexing power over one of the most important people in the country.

The Obama candidacy, through every fault of his own, has become a slave to Jeremiah Wright. Wright and only Wright can decide to rally people for or against Obama. Only Wright can decide to retire quietly to his new 1.6 million dollar home. Only Wright can decide to continue embarrassing and harming Obama’s campaign. Whether Obama wins or loses the nomination, rest assure that Wright will have something to do with it.

Poor Obama. Can’t he just eat his waffle?

Tags: 2008, 2008-election, barack-obama, elections, jeremiah-wright, obama, reverend-wright, wright

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