The Wright thing - how much effect will it have on Obama 08?

snood wrote:

What I hope happens now is two things - that Obama takes a deep breath, bites the bullet and goes on to admit he had heard some of this language before and was wrong to deny that, but .....

That would be suicide, you don't ever ADMIT to lying in politics. But again he's not good at lying and probably should avoid it in future time. He might want to HIRE somebody to tell the occasional necessary lie FOR him. Possibly SlicKKK......

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Some things I know about Jeremiah Wright, he knows about slavery and lynching and such from a victims standpoint. He dont run drugs or launder drug money but has a well documented idea of who does. He did not lie us into the Vietnam war or run death squads or support Pol Pot or Pinochet. He did not appropriate money for a biological weapon that would attack and destroy the human immune system as Congress did at the request of the DOD. He did not lie us into the war in Iraq. He's guilty as hell of telling us the truth about our nation's history to the present. When he says God damn America I believe he means tell the truth to America. That would be the right blessing that would recognize serious disease and is the only thing that could lead to healing. He's done us a great service. Of course he's crucified for it.

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snood wrote:

Okay, here's what I think about the Jeremiah Wright thing...

I think that Obama's appeal to a lot of people has been their perception that he's not quite like all the others who have gone before as far as trusting the American people with the transparent truth. I think that his answer to this Wright thing has been the first thing that has serious potential for flying in the face of that perception.

I think he very probably did know about Pastor Wright's penchant for saying incendiary things before his presidential campaign, and that he has not been forthcoming with that knowledge. It doesn't bother me to the point that it negates all the good I see in the man, but I see how he could have handled this better.

Without dealing here with the intrinsic truth or untruth of what Pastor Wright said on all those now infamous occasions, I understand their volatility in a country with the kind of class and race issues still outstanding that we undeniably still have. I also understand how Obama could have a lot of inner struggle dismissing the man and the church that has served to nurture him and his family for nearly half of his life.

I think he has done the right thing by disavowing the things that I believe he sincerely differs with. I hope the only people for whom this is very deeply troubling are those who had very little possibility of voting for him to begin with. For everyone else, I hope they come to the realization that Reverend Wright is not Barack Obama and that they forgive Senator Obama for struggling as long as he did before drawing a line between the two of them clear enough for all to see.

What I hope happens now is two things - that Obama takes a deep breath, bites the bullet and goes on to admit he had heard some of this language before and was wrong to deny that, but that it does not define who he is and what he believes; and that people don't let the voices that have been opposed to his candidacy all along convince them that this is unforgivable.

Very well said, Snood. Couldnt have said it better, or even remotely as well.

I just hope that if he would do what you propose, in that last para, it wouldnt slash into his campaign/numbers/etc. No idea how big a deal it would be (blown into).

But I do think I agree that it would be better to cut this short that way, than to let the ambiguity stand and risk being caught in this same issue again and again whenever someone finds some evdence that hey, he was there, or he did know.

What will he do? I havent got a clue, really..

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Yeah...

This is what he said btw, in terms of the "new to him" part we've been talking about:

Barack Obama wrote:

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments."

I think that last sentence is important. I can't quite imagine that he'd say "I made it clear at the time" if he didn't. It's hard to confirm, though -- Googling it turns up mostly much more recent stuff. (I tried "advanced search" but it doesn't allow searching within a window -- like only up TO a year ago, rather than the past year. I'll try the NYT website next, it does allow that I think.)

I did find this, recent but from before the video thing:

Quote:

The other Chicago connection that dogs the Obamas is Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., their pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ.

[...]

The candidate disinvited Wright from giving the convocation when he announced his Presidential bid.

[...]

"We don't want our church to receive the brunt of this notoriety," Obama told me. I asked her whether Wright's statements presented a problem for her or for Barack. "You know, your pastor is like your grandfather, right?" she said. "There are plenty of things he says that I don't agree with, that Barack doesn't agree with.because they've got things wrong. You try to be a part of expanding the conversation."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/10/080310fa_fact_collins?currentPage=7

All of this is in keeping with the impression I've had that none of this is particularly new -- that Wright has been "controversial" and Obama has addressed that before there was renewed focus because of the video.

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Maybe this is it?

Quote:

Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama."

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, "You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/us/politics/06obama.html

Timing would fit ("beginning of my presidential campaign.")

Not exactly "strongly condemned," though, unless the strong condemnation was in private... :-?

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Here's another -- April 2007:

Quote:

This is interesting:

Quote:

In March, Mr. Wright said in an interview that his family and some close associates were angry about the canceled address, for which they blamed Obama campaign advisers but that the situation was "not irreparable," adding, "Several things need to happen to fix it."

Asked if he and Mr. Wright had patched up their differences, Mr. Obama said: "Those are conversations between me and my pastor."

Mr. Wright, who has long prided himself on criticizing the establishment, said he knew that he may not play well in Mr. Obama's audition for the ultimate establishment job.

"If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me," Mr. Wright said with a shrug. "I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen."

I recommend the whole article for context (along the lines of what gungasnake has said) (I agree those were good comments):

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html

Still no "strongly condemned," though, unless it falls under "conversations between me and my pastor."

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I consider the airing of those videos nationally as the watershed moment that puts John McCain in the White House because Obama will probably get the dem nomination and lose the general.

Certainly no surprise. We are on the way out as a major power and a successful country. It'll take awhile but our children will see it and it started in 2000.

the longer the dem nomination battle goes on the longer both dems are exposed as same old same old politicians... it will then shift the decision to who will stop me from getting my head sawed off ( to borrow from kickycan) and McCain will be that guy in American perception. bush will use all the power he still has in his inner circle to promote that perception.

We, nationally, are real saps.

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From Obama's interview with the Chciago Tribune (I gave the [audio] link already yesterday - here it is in print online

Quote:

And, you know, he hasn't been my political adviser, he's been my pastor. And I have to say that the clips that have been shown over the past couple of days are deeply disturbing to me. I wasn't in church during those sermons.

The things he said and the way he said them I think are offensive. And I reject them, and they don't reflect who I am or what I believe in. In fairness to him, this was sort of a greatest hits. They basically culled five or six sermons out of 30 years of preaching. That doesn't excuse them, and I've said so very clearly, but that's not the relationship I had with him. That's not the relationship I had with the church, and if I had heard those kinds of statements being said, if I had been in church on those days, I would have objected fiercely to them, and I would have told him personally.

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sozobe wrote:

Yeah...

This is what he said btw, in terms of the "new to him" part we've been talking about:

Barack Obama wrote:
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments."

[..]

All of this is in keeping with the impression I've had that none of this is particularly new -- that Wright has been "controversial" and Obama has addressed that before there was renewed focus because of the video.

But come on, do you really believe that the first time Obama ever heard that Wright had been making these kinds of statements was "at the beginning of my presidential campaign"? He went to Church there for twenty years.

Thats what I'm talking about when I'm saying that the "I didnt know" line of defense is a needlessly tricky one. He's kind of setting himself up, here.

I mean, of course "Wright has been "controversial"', that can hardly be news. You say that, well, Obama "has addressed that before there was renewed focus because of the video". Sure, but - and? From what I've gotten, the criticism that he's getting (and the criticism that he'd be getting in the generals) is not that he only addressed it when the video surfaced, but that he never addressed it at any time during the 20 years he went to church there. Whereas it can hardly have been unknown to him at the time that Wright made such statements.

So whether he only addressed it when he started his presidential campaign last year, or later still when media stories appeared, yeah that wont really make much difference here. Sure, it would be even worse if he'd have only addressed it now, but the basic complaint remains the same either way: that he adopted and stayed true to Wright as pastor even though Wright was wont to make statements that yer regular voter out there probably consideres out of bounds.

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the Obama zealots will take at face value that he never knew anything about this.

purposely obtuse.

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Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

the Obama zealots will take at face value that he never knew anything about this.

purposely obtuse.

Snood had said several posts earlier:

Quote:

I think he very probably did know about Pastor Wright's penchant for saying incendiary things before his presidential campaign, and that he has not been forthcoming with that knowledge.

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Very Interesting commentary from Frank Schaiffer about Wright...

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.

Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.

Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:

If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.

And this:

In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....

Then this:

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...

Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).

Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.

Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."

We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html )

Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.

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sozobe wrote:

Quote:
[..] According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, "You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/us/politics/06obama.html

Timing would fit ("beginning of my presidential campaign.")

Yeah - I think this kind of might go to the heart of the problem. An important part of Obama's candidacy has been about being a step up from yer regular politician when it comes to honesty, transparency etc. And though I dont think he's holy or anything, I do think that he has in fact been a little more straightforward and no-nonsense than most politicians, especially compared with the neverending and often surreal spin coming from camp Hillary. He needs to hold on to this modus operandi of being a "telling it like it is" kind of politician.

And this case seems to throw a spanner in the works on that count. If he had come out and said what Gunga suggested -- like, look, of course I knew he occasionally said stuff like that, I'm not stupid; but that's just part of the scene in the place I was active in and representing; I disagreed with it and have always disagreed with it; but I stayed in the Church because I did like a lot of other things I learned and got to do there -- then he's done with the issue. People can accept it or not, but there arent any more gotchas lurking then.

Now part of his defense is, "well I didnt know". Didnt know that Wright was saying such incendiary stuff - these statements only "came to my attention" when I started my campaign. Thats tricky. Is that really credible? Any information that will place him in the pews during such a sermon, or even being told about one afterwards, will bring the question back up: "ah, so it had gotten to your attention before!" That seems like a needless pickle to put yourself in.

And that's especially true when there's recent articles like this one where you're quoted telling the man that "You can get kind of rough in the sermons." I mean, so he did know - maybe not about the exact one or two statements quoted now, but about his tendency to make such statements in general. Hardly something that only "came to his attention" in 2007 then.

I guess that basically, I think, right now (I might change my opinion on this tomorrow), if you have Obama now saying, "the statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy [only] first came to my attention [..] at the beginning of my presidential campaign," when you have him telling Wright at that time already that, "You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public;" it just doesnt sound like he's playing open cards. It's the kind of juxtaposition that make Obama seem like yer regular prevaricating politico, doing the nudge nudge wink wink at Wright and then pretending disbelief when his statements come out anyway. Lawyerly language that may make him technically correct - he always knew Wright was a "rough" speaker who said stuff that white voters might freak out about, but just didnt know about the exact statements that white pundits are now freaking out about - but are Clintonesque, indirect, not straight-up.

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nimh wrote:

But come on, do you really believe that the first time Obama ever heard that Wright had been making these kinds of statements was "at the beginning of my presidential campaign"? He went to Church there for twenty years.

Thats what I'm talking about when I'm saying that the "I didnt know" line of defense is a needlessly tricky one. He's kind of setting himself up, here.

I agree, and said so in my first post here.

sozobe wrote:

I think the biggest risk out of this is if Obama can somehow be placed at a sermon where Wright said unpleasant things.

People are suspicious of the "oh, this is new to you, huh?" part of it, and I can see that.

In terms of what I personally believe, I think he had heard less extreme versions -- the "Audacity to Hope" sermon itself, which he obviously heard, seems pretty representative and has a lot of the problematic aspects of Wright's sermons.

I'd believe he hadn't heard the specific 9/11 quote until he was told about it, though.

One thing I don't get -- and seems to be a problem -- is the discrepancy between the talk show comments and the Huffington Post comments. I had a general impression (from comments here mostly) that he'd said stuff was new to him via the video -- then went back to the Huffington Post comments and noted that he'd said that he knew about it (the statements that have been "the cause of controversy") for about a year. But then in reading about what he said on talk shows, it looks like he's said there that he only just learned about some of it now.

Quote:

Whereas it can hardly have been unknown to him at the time that Wright made such statements.

I guess it really depends on what "such statements" means. I have no doubt that Wright said some out-there stuff that was part and parcel of his whole black empowerment, salt-of-the-earth pastor persona. Everything I've seen about the video indicates that Wright wasn't saying stuff that was that extreme every sermon, but that the worst of it has been spliced together. I'd believe that Obama didn't know about some specific statements made when he wasn't there. It gets less plausible the more statements there are, though. (I haven't actually seen the video -- how many?)

Quote:

So whether he only addressed it when he started his presidential campaign last year, or later still when media stories appeared, yeah that wont really make much difference here. Sure, it would be even worse if he'd have only addressed it now, but the basic complaint remains the same either way: that he adopted and stayed true to Wright as pastor even though Wright was wont to make statements that yer regular voter out there probably considered out of bounds.

I think that's probably true, that many people consider things that Wright said on an ongoing basis to be out of bounds. (As in, not just the more extreme stuff selected for the video.) I don't know if that's enough to sink Obama, or if it should be.

Anyway, as I said right at the outset, I agree that the most problematic part is that he's making a claim that seems too likely to bite him in the butt.

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Of course, one instance in which he turns out to be just as bad as Hillary hardly makes for a reason to then just vote for Hillary... So he's got that going in his favour.

I mean, his only opponent left in the primaries does this kind of lawyerly prevarication all the time, so it makes little sense for voters to abandon him for her over this. More of a problem in the generals, maybe.

But maybe I'm underestimating the visceral reaction voters might have to the iconic image of the Angry Black Man thats suddenly thrown in the mix here. That being seen fudging stuff on an account that brings that whole looming boogyman along with it is a dealbreaker in a way that, say, fudging stuff about your tax returns or the donations to your spouse's Presidential Library isnt; a wholly different ballgame, when it comes to primal reactions.

Snood, what do you think?

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snood wrote:

Bi-Polar Bear wrote:
the Obama zealots will take at face value that he never knew anything about this.

purposely obtuse.

Snood had said several posts earlier:

Quote:

I think he very probably did know about Pastor Wright's penchant for saying incendiary things before his presidential campaign, and that he has not been forthcoming with that knowledge.

Dontcha know, Snood - every stupid zealotic post by an Obama supporter just goes to show how obtuse Obama supporters are; but every nuanced or reflective post by an Obama supporter is - well - just an exception, those say nothing about what Obamaites are like. :wink:

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snood wrote:

Very Interesting commentary from Frank Schaiffer about Wright...

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Yeah, the double standard is deafening. Just look at how McCain's Hagee connection barely rippled the headlines. But yeah, thats what you're dealing with. I guess the figure of the white evangelical preacherman just doesnt constitute the kind of iconic boogeyman that the Angry Black Man presents. So they can go a lot further without triggering anything like the same kind of fear and loathing.

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sozobe wrote:

I think that's probably true, that many people consider things that Wright said on an ongoing basis to be out of bounds. (As in, not just the more extreme stuff selected for the video.) I don't know if that's enough to sink Obama, or if it should be.

Well, I think it shouldnt be, but hell, I'm a lefty Dutch expat in Hungary.. what they think in Toledo, Ohio (for random example), I dunno.

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I don't know, either. Since perceived toughness has been one of his weaknesses (er), I could see it actually helping in some ways. I can also see it turning people off, though. Question is whether the people who would be turned off would ever have been supporters. I dunno.

nimh wrote:

And that's especially true when there's recent articles like this one where you're quoted telling the man that "You can get kind of rough in the sermons." I mean, so he did know - maybe not about the exact one or two statements quoted now, but about his tendency to make such statements in general. Hardly something that only "came to his attention" in 2007 then.

It seems possible that it came to his attention in the Rolling Stone article ("The Radical Roots of Barack Obama").

As in, the timeline was:

- Wright was invited to give convocation at Obama's announcement that he was running for president (January 2007)

- Rolling Stone article came out, about Wright and his more out-there stuff and Obama's relationship to him (February 22nd issue which seems to have been published February 7th, 2007)

- Obama disinvites Wright, citing the Rolling Stone article, and makes the "rough" comment (as per Wright, anyway) (shortly before Feb 10th, 2007)

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Re: The Wright thing - how much effect will it have on Obama

nimh wrote:

Sorry to be rude, but I am NOT asking for your opinion about Wright or the things he said. I am asking how big a deal this will be, in your opinion, for Obama's chances now and in the generals.

Thank you very much!

We're all used to hyperbole about those around politicians. Remember the "Clinton is a serial rapist" stuff from sixteen years ago? Those who already don't favor Obama will claim this is a big deal. Those who favor him will ignore it. Those on the fence will have an excuse if they were already leaning away from him. In the end, it will matter for naught.

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The Wright thing - how much effect will it have on Obama 08?

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