Race in the Race for the White House

While waiting for the speech by Barack Obama on race in America:

I, like most of you, am loathe to pass judgment on the nature or quality of another person's faith, or lack thereof. For the most part, I just don't care so long as you don't use your faith for personal gain - financial, political, or otherwise. Then you are demanding that I pay attention.

On Fox & Friends this morning with debate partner Bob Beckel we talked about what effect the whole Jeremiah Wright deal. I suggested that the paradox in which Obama now finds himself is this:

Now that the video of Wright's hate-mongering sermons have become public, Obama wants us to believe that not only was he not sitting in a pew for any of the sermons in question, but Wright's tone and language were never even a part of any conversation he had with his wife or any other member of the congregation.

"In effect," I said, "Obama now would have us believe that all he did was slow down in front of the church on Sunday mornings and let the girls out while he went off to play paintball."

The Democratic Party is now in an ugly full-blown, racially-based fight between its two candidates. Without any evidence to support the claim, there is a growing feeling that the Clinton campaign is somehow behind the sudden appearance of the "Jeremiah Wright's Greatest Hits" DVDs.

Before you blame Fox News Channel for pushing this story, Tom Bevans - the man behind RealClearPolitics.com - wrote this morning that this political torpedo broke the surface after "ABC News ran a four-minute segment highlighting some of the hate-filled language of [Obama's] former pastor."

On CNN last Friday, Obama's campaign released what Wolf Blitzer called "a very strong statement" in opposition to the language and intent of Wright's sermons and suggested this might well put the fire out.

I said that in the words of the late, lamented H.R. Haldeman it was "TL2 - Too little, too late."

The WashPost's Liberal columnist Richard Cohen agreed in an op-ed this morning: "Why did Barack Obama take so long to "reject outright" the harshly critical statements about America made by his minister, Jeremiah Wright…?"

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After watching Obama's speech:

First observation is that Obama began with the words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution - but not all the words of the preamble. "We the people … in order to form a more perfect union," the speech began.

Why, I wonder, would he leave out the four words: "of the United States?"

Obama said "I have already condemned" Jeremiah Wright, but there was NO call for "all Americans, Black and White; Brown and Yellow; Christian, Jew or Muslim to join me in this condemnation."

After that "condemnation," Obama then went into a lengthy defense of Jeremiah Wright.

And then after that lengthy defense of Jeremiah Wright he went into a long dissertation on the history of racism - in effect saying the true horror of slavery justified Jeremiah Wright's sermons which "simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning."

Of course, Obama blamed Conservatives:

"Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism."

No slap at Liberals, though. The only time in the speech the word "Liberal" is mentioned is inferentially suggesting Conservatives are behind

"the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap."

In the end, Obama did exactly what I suspected he would do: suggest that to vote for anyone but him was to further racism in America.

We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism ... We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words … or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

The speech ended at 11:30 leaving me unconvinced that it was anything more than damages control; and certainly unconvinced of Obama's "new politics."

I am not a racist. And I'm still not voting for him for Obama.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the RealClearPolitics curtain-raiser and Richard Cohen's op-ed. Also a Mullfoto which is a cheap Spitzer joke and a Catchy Caption of the Day.