Entries Tagged 'Obamamania' ↓

Ann Althouse analyzes a Rasmussen poll:

Poll results:

“How do you rate Obama’s speech? Excellent, good, fair, or poor?”

30% Excellent
21% Good
26% Fair
21% Poor
1% Not sure

Althouse [e.a.]:

The important break in the numbers is between “excellent” and the rest, and 70% said the speech fell short of “excellent.” This is, I think, disastrous for Obama. …

Asked whether the speech was “racially divisive, unifying, or neither,” only 30% — 30% again — thought the speech was “unifying,” which is what Obama intended it and his entire campaign to be.

Obama’s popularity has been built on unifying us and transcending race. If only 30% of us heard unification in that speech, then the speech and the connection to Wright have been massively destructive to what is the chief substance of his reputation.

 No kidding.

But Althouse gets the last word, because she’s got the best metaphor:

Obama told white people to feel guilty about race just when they’d been so happy thinking that loving him, just him, was the answer to racial problems. When we saw him consorting with someone who seemed to hate us, we needed reassurance that Obama loves us, and loving Obama was enough. But he didn’t say that, and now we’re confused. Our boyfriend was telling us he needs to see other people, and we don’t understand the relationship anymore.

I think we can safely declare that Obama-mania is over.

Time delves into the “real” Obama, explaining his attraction and loyalty to the Reverend Wright.

NewsBusters has the sassiest take on Time’s spin:

Here’s the gist of Time’s defense of Obama, a distillation of Stengel’s statements and Time articles by Amy Sullivan and Joe Klein [link fixed by me --ed.]

* An important aspect of the problem is that white Americans are incredibly ignorant about black churches in America.
* In fact, Rev. Wright’s church isn’t that radical as black churches go.
* It was understandable for Obama to have joined Wright’s church. At the time he was a 27-year old bi-racial man trying to figure out his identity as the son of an atheist father and skeptic mother and needed a church “he could learn from.”
* It’s understandable that Obama didn’t leave the church: it’s like reading a book–you don’t necessarily agree with the author.
* Obama’s speech was a “triumph,” and Americans will be thinking “small” if they make the Wright thing a big issue in the campaign.

For real depth on this issue, read John McWhorter’s piece in the New York Sun, in its entirety. This grabbed my attention in a way that Obama himself has been unable to (indeed, readers know that he has left me cold) [e.a.]:

I have written that it is part of the essence of the modern black American identity to be a victor in private but a victim in public. There is a sense that while initiative is important, blacks still have to display more of it than whites, and that this isn’t fair.

Someone who feels this way can have done well and even be comfortable around white people. However, that sense that black America still labors under a general injustice can express itself in taking a certain pleasure in listening to someone like Jeremiah Wright.

They hear a stirring articulation of rebellion, listenable according to a sense that fealty to one’s race entails at least a gestural nod to sticking a finger in whitey’s eye now and then. The tone, the music of the statements is more vivid than the content. Sermons like this are Sunday morning’s version of gangsta rap.

This, then, is why, as Mr. Obama said in his speech yesterday, he could no more disown Reverend Wright than disown black people in general. So, why did the Obamas not find another church after finding out that Reverend Wright had some tart things to say about “the Man”? Because they weren’t listening to them as logic, but as atmosphere.

This explanation makes total sense to me on one level: I’m a huge Eminem fan, and I unabashedly love (among others) “White America!” and every other extremely provocative song he sings. He stokes my inner rebel, the one that still feels the occasional rush of rage at America’s unfulfilled promise.

Although I have long since given up my rebellious ways, stoking my inner rebel allows me to keep a relatively placid face to show to the world. (Isn’t that what we do—stoke what’s inside without threatening what’s outside—when we listen to music, watch movies, read books, etc.? Blogging is a good outlet, too.)

But Obama came nowhere near explaining what McWhorter spells out [e.a.]:

Well, in hearing Reverend Wright’s agitprop as performance rather than hate speech, Barack Obama is black indeed — in a way other than the uninteresting one of melanin. Yet I see this as irrelevant to how he would run the country.

That is, I, for one, am still ready for a black president. I wonder if the rest of America is.

Hmmm. Put like that, maybe I am.

But I’m not sure that this argument–that Wright is primarily a performance artist doing agitprop—would appeal to most people if it were spelled out. I’m glad to have had my perspective broadened, though (even if it doesn’t leave me any more persuaded that Obama would be a good president).

Indeed, I think he would be the perfect jurist and, for the same reason, a terrible chief executive and commander in chief.

He didn’t explain why he stayed, but by trying to show black and white resentment as the backdrop for Wright’s comments, Obama suggested that his response to controversy isn’t to walk out of the room but to try to understand what’s fueling the fire.

A president’s job, of course, isn’t to understand what’s fueling the fire. It’s to keep fires from consuming America.

That seems to be the Obama strategy: shut down dissent.

James Joyner:

One of the major strains of reaction to Barack Obama’s “More Perfect Union” speech is that those who are not persuaded by it are therefore racist or at least unreasoning fools. Poisoning the well in this manner may be an effective rhetorical device but it undercuts the very message of the speech, which is that race remains a very complicated issue in American culture and that we must tolerate a wide range of expressions on the subject.

Andrew Sullivan began sewing [sic] the race seed before the speech and after it adds “some are immune to the grace and hope and civility that Reagan summoned at his best; the anger and bitterness is so palpably fueled by fear and racism it really does mark a moment of revelation to me.”

Kevin Drum:

As good as Obama’s speech was, it’s naive not to also understand it as the political tool it was meant to be. And on that score, I’d say that the Obama supporters James points to are doing precisely what Obama intended: trying to take Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary comments off the table by implying that anyone who still insists on talking about them must be either a simpleton or a racist. He’s basically daring the Sean Hannitys of the world to continue demagoging Wright, and making a savvy bet that the rest of the press will line up behind him to agree that the real issue isn’t Wright, it’s racism and its complex historical legacy. And anyone who doesn’t agree is either a partisan hack or a hopeless primitive. [e.a.]

Mickey Kaus:

Troublesome Equivalence II [bold is Kaus's original; italic is mine]

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street ….

The most disastrous sentence in the speech. If Obama’s saying that those who fear young black men on the street are racists, the equivalents of Rev. Wright in offensiveness, then he’s just insulted a whole lof ot people. If he loses the votes of everyone who fears young black men, he loses the election. People fear black men on the street–as even Jesse Jackson once momentarily admitted–because they cause a wildly disproportionate share of street crime. Does Obama want to be the candidate who says that thought is verboten?

Swampland blog yesterday, March 18, from one of Ana Marie Cox’s emailers:

Well written, intelligent, politically clever in that way he has of ennobling his candidacy even while insulting his opponents and their supporters…But most people aren’t as tuned to insults as campaign staff — the unfair moral equivalence he implied between Wright and Ferraro or the suggestion that white men voting for McCain do so because they are trapped in old resentments.

I find it deeply troubling that Obama supporters either don’t see the insults Obama is hurling at people or think that the everyday Joe doesn’t pick up on what Leon Wieseltier (in an other context and, crucially, written before the videotapes of Wright surfaced and thus before Obama’s speech) referred to as his “hauteur”:

There is nothing about a candidate for the presidency that is not of interest, in the old politics and the new. If you want fewer questions, seek fewer powers. And there is an awful air of impeccability about Obama, with his peculiar mixture of populism and hauteur: criticism of him is not only wrong, it is also impudent. He regularly waves criticisms away as “silly.” He will talk to dictators but not to reporters.

Yes, Obama’s manner is deeply irritating, and he seems unaware of it. I see that he’ll be on CNN tonight telling Anderson Cooper that the Wright controversy has “shaken him up.” He’ll be “sharing,” Oprah-style. The MSM Obamamania is attempting to help him lift off again.

As I write, on Hardball, Chris Matthews is talking to Bill Maher, asking wistfully[I'm paraphrasing]:

Why isn’t Obama connecting with the lunch-bucket working-class guy?

Maher replies: Well, I think I get it. [Pause.} And Obama is very smart to tell those white guys that they’re right to be angry but that anger is directed at the wrong people (blacks). Their enemy is the corporation! This was the argument in What’s the Matter with Kansas? People keep voting against their own interests. They keep voting for people who want to repeal the estate tax, which just puts more money into the pockets of the richest 1% of America. That’s the challenge of the Democrats—to convince people who their real problem is. And their real problem is that corporations have taken over America.

Matthews: You’re a thoughtful guy, Bill. I agree with almost everything you say.

It’s astonishing to see the degree of delusion among Obama supporters. First, they think he can put the toxic Rev. Wright behind him by mau-mauing anyone who refuses to be silenced. Then they think he can run on a Commie-lite platform and win votes.

Right! Other than that, he’s the perfect candidate!

I’ve been offline and busy, so I haven’t caught any media or blogospheric post-Philly-speech spin. Here’s what I heard this morning, though, from deep inside Very Tolerant Liberal Democrat territory:

“I don’t mind hearing criticisms of America, but a lot of other people feel differently.”

“McCain is starting to look good to people.”

“The Democrats have turned this election into a circus.”

Shorter Barack Obama: Do as I say (move beyond race and unite), not as I do (embrace an aggressively divisive figure for 20 years).

If this were a loyalty test, he’d get points for standing by his man. But it’s a job interview for the presidency of the United States. The man that Obama has chosen to stand by is toxic . The guy is radioactive. If you’re a politician with your eye on the White House, you find a way to escape and you run the other way.

I can only conclude that he’s not serious about running for president. All he wants is the mantle of the Democratic Victims’ Party. He’s welcome to it.

At least half the liberal Democrats I know have told me that they’re going to vote for McCain.

Rasmussen polled people to find out what they thought of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Here are some of the findings (out of the order in which the article lists them, and in the order in which they interest me, since I’ve been following this mostly as a media story rather than as a political story). The highlighting is mine:

Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters say they have read, seen, or heard news stories about Wright’s comments.

Pastor Jeremiah Wright, who has become part of the national political dialogue in recent days, is viewed favorably by 8% of voters nationwide. … 58% have an unfavorable view of the Pastor

Last Thursday, 52% of voters nationwide had a favorable opinion of Obama. That figure has fallen to 47% on Monday (see recent daily results).

Seventy-three percent (73%) of voters say that Wright’s comments are racially divisive. That opinion is held by 77% of White voters and 58% of African-American voters.

Most voters, 56%, said Wright’s comments made them less likely to vote for Obama.

In recent days, Obama has also lost ground to John McCain in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

I didn’t need this poll to tell me that the revelations about Wright would lead to revulsion on the part of most people who heard about it.

Derbyshire puts it best today at The Corner:

I repeat: Obama’s toast. He may yet get the Democratic nomination, but tens of millions of Americans who are neither (a) black nor (b) guilty white liberals are simply appalled that Obama would revere a guy like Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, whatever the particularities of which services he did and didn’t attend. It defies belief thatObama knew this man for all that time, intimately enough to have him supervise at the Obama wedding and the children’s baptisms, yet did not know that Wright is a white-hating, America-hating crank. Who on earth believes this?

In brief, fairly or not, this long, close Obama family association with the Reverend makes people doubt the Magic Negro image, which, in turn, is what drove the Obama “movement.”

The range of opinions in the blogosphere is nothing short of astonishing. The prize for nonchalant cluelessness goes to Ana Marie Cox [emphasis is mine]:

At first, I thought the Rev. Wright story might sour people on Obama. When it first [re-]broke last week, all an Obama adviser could offer as spin was, “It will give the senator a chance to talk about the role of religion in his life.” At the time, it seemed very optimistic to think that Obama’s smooth eloquence could complete — and win — against Wright’s fiery rhetoric. Now, after the assist they got from John McCain (who may have been thinking about how the MSM interpreted his own, much less intimate relationship with Rev. Hagee), the mangled coverage of Wright could raise enough doubts about the Reverend’s role in Obama’s beliefs* that Obama will not be too bruised by the media dust-up – and maybe even can use it as an opportunity to talk about his faith.

One of her commenters set her straight:

As far as people “souring” on Obama, I can’t see how mainstream, non-Ward Churchill-type Democrats, much less “Independents and some Republicans” won’t be shocked and offended–once it’s blanketing the airwaves in key states courtesy of Republican 527’s. And then there’s the “Israel is being attacked!” folks who are moderate and conservative Jews sensitive to anti-semitism, and extremely pro-Israel conservative church-going Christians who will be newly energized against Democrats in the fall–just what the McCain campaign would love. … “God Damn America”? How does that square with the 50 State Strategy, I wonder?

I could be wrong, though. This guy may be bulletproof–”I didn’t inhale” seemed to work, too.

Andrew Sullivan is still making a valiant effort to defend his candidate, and for good PC measure he asks us to be fair to the Rev. Wright too, to see the good things he has done with his ministry. (Sullivan is way less than convincing about another Obama “scandal”; he links to a piece in the ChiTrib that’s supposed to exonerate our candidate of corruption; apparently a thorough reporting indicates that the “scandal” reveals “just poor judgment” on Obama’s part. I remind Sullivan that Obama has been trying to sell us on his superior judgment about Iraq. A Google search indicates that, as of this writing, Obama’s judgment is being called into question all over the place.)

Ross Douthat highlighted Ezra Klein’s “liberal cluelessness” here:

As to Ezra’s larger point, of course it’s “fine” to be a white Christian extremist in America; it’s also fine to be a black Christian extremist like Jeremiah Wright. This is a free country, after all. … Wright isn’t just Obama’s supporter; he’s his pastor, his friend, and his spiritual mentor, which makes him exactly the kind of person whose views ought to be of interest to a public that’s considering electing Barack Obama President of the United States. And as to the substance of those views, well, if Ezra really thinks that Wright’s sermons have sparked controversy because he broke a taboo against getting angry over the fact that “blacks have suffered a long history of oppression in this country” and “still face deep institutional discrimination,” I would suggest that he take another look at them, paying particular attention to Wright’s remarks about 9/11, as well as what appears to be his suggestion that the U.S. government created not only the crack epidemic, but the AIDS epidemic as well.

TigerHawk parses the situation dispassionately. And his commenters offer interesting detail:

TUCC is part of the Liberation Theology movement, which attempts to and does do a lot of good work in underserved communities. It has a quasi-Marxist philosohy that emphasizes the exploitation of the weak by the powerful, and that the teachings of Jesus call on Christians not only to help the weak, but to deal with the power structures that unjustly created their situations in the first place. In the sense that Jesus was a rebel against the status quo of 2000 years ago, these churches want to significantly change the culture today.

Obama is a smart man and might be a capable POTUS, but he would clearly be the most “progressive” person ever elected to that position, more so than FDR. He “came to” Jesus becasue of the appeal to him of Liberation Theology, and how it fit with his desire to do good works in the community, notwithstanding the other more mainstream churches that also had extensive community involvement (almost any AME church).

Here’s the comment that struck me:

Barak [sic; please apply to all misspellings --ed.] is associated with that. It is as if there is a public Barak, and a down home Barak. He has become an equivocal figure. He is not longer a man with a simple and appealing message. He is a man with a complex message and part of it is in code and not suitable for the general public.

Barak has now been revealed as not really having found a way to bridge the gap between the black community and the rest of America. It seemed like maybe he had found a way, but now it is clear he is multilingual and has different phrases for different constituencies.

When people talk about a dialogue between the races, as if that would be transforming, they usually suggest that the dialogue should be open, candid and honest. Barak, with one foot firmly planted on each side of the chasm, is neutralized. He can’t take sides. He also can’t facilitate because each side would want to see him champion their cause. So at the end of the day he can’t even talk about race honestly to the American public. What an astonishing situation.

At TAPPED, someone concedes that the Wright story is sticky, but blames racism and a Bill Kristol error, not Obama or his pastor, for the mess.

And what a fine mess it is.

I understand (and you will too, if you read this article from 2000, for example) that in order to build his credibility in the black community in Chicago, Obama had to choose where to put down roots. Many in that community thought he wasn’t black enough, that he was uppity; so it was an uphill struggle for him. Still, he made it.

When he knew he was going to take the leap to run for office, though, he should have distanced himself from Wright. That’s the bottom line.

Oprah was smart enough to do that (according to an article from 2002 that Tom Maguire links to here). Obama should have done the same.]

Finis.

No candidate for the presidency wants to see these three headlines (from Memeorandum) on the same day:

Obama says Rezko played a bigger fundraising role

Obama’s Pastor’s Sermon: ‘God Damn America’

Michelle Obama’s hospital: On senator’s wish-list

On the bright side, Obama has finally figured out that he’s got a problem.

He went into serious damage-control mode tonight, appearing with Keith Olbermann (who was direct and skeptical and pulled no punches; he was also morose) on MSNBC, with Major Garrett (who was thoroughly professional, asking only factual questions) on Fox, and with Anderson Cooper (who was no-nonsense, and openly skeptical) on CNN. Those appearances came after he released a statement to HuffPo in the late afternoon.

But early in the day, Obama—probably unaware that videos of the fiery, racial animus-spouting Wright had gone viral on the internet and were being replayed over and over again on the cable channels—tried to tamp down the controversy by suggesting that Wright’s incendiary comments had been “cherry-picked.” TPM’s Greg Sargent reported at 11:47 a.m.:

In an interview with a Pittsburgh newspaper, Obama personally addresses the revelations that Obama’s pastor said “God damn America”:

Q: I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s all over the wire today (from an ABC News story), a statement that your pastor (the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side) made in a sermon in 2003 that instead of singing “God Bless America,” black people should sing a song essentially saying “God Damn America.”A: I haven’t seen the line. This is a pastor who is on the brink of retirement who in the past has made some controversial statements. I profoundly disagree with some of these statements.

Q: What about this particular statement?

A: Obviously, I disagree with that. Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor. There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it’s important to judge me on what I’ve said in the past and what I believe.

Forgive me if I’m not getting this, but most of the things I heard Wright say on some of those videos were “just wrong.” Are we supposed to believe that these three sermons are the only instances when he’s said stuff that was “just wrong”?

I know you’re not stupid, so I’m going to settle on the likeliest explanation, offered by a commenter at Contentions. He figures you knew you’d get a pass, even on such a controversial part of your exotic background, from the folks you know best:

Obama’s support may not dry up among Dems, for they are a forgiving bunch when their nominee-in-waiting is a post-racial leftist change dude –

The usual suspects are, of course, doing just about what you’d expect: blaming Hillary!

It’s a gross error in judgment, though, as that same commenter at Contentions notes:

— but the rest of America will turn away in revulsion.

Well yeah.

Dude: what were you thinking when you came up with that lame line about the “old uncle” you don’t disagree with?

On one of the Fox shows tonight, Ari Fleischer said (I’m paraphrasing) that the Republicans are looking forward to running against Obama, because as time goes on, he shows himself to be just a typical politician.

You don’t say!

—————

Thanks to Judith Viorst for inspiring the title of this post.

Obama has been formulating an answer to Hillary all weekend. As TPM notes, he finally said it today:

“If I’m not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?”

Good retort!

Greg Sargent at TPM writes excitedly [e.a.]:

This will dominate the news cycle, and if Obama’s supporters were worried that he hasn’t hit back forcefully enough in recent days, this might go a long way towards allaying their concerns.

Then Sargent comes back down to reality and notes glumly:

Unfortunately for Obama, the Eliot Spitzer story is probably going to overshadow this in tonight’s news.

Yes, what a shame that the “news” has stories to cover that aren’t about the fate of Barack Obama.