Jerome Armstrong noticed something really interesting. "What seems most noticeable about the polling is that Obama didn't start tanking until after he 'denounced' Wright. Why is that?"
A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 30% of the nation's Likely Voters believe Barack Obama denounced his former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, because he was outraged. Most-58%--say he denounced the Pastor for political convenience. The survey was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday night. Obama made his statements about Wright on Tuesday.
Wright held a mini-media tour last weekend capped by a press conference at the National Press Club on Monday. Only 33% of voters believe that Obama was surprised by the views Wright expressed at Monday's press conference. Fifty-two percent (52%) say he was not surprised.
Fifty-six percent (56%) say it's at least somewhat likely that Obama "shares some of Pastor Wright's controversial views about the United States." That figure includes 26% who say it's Very Likely Obama holds such views. At the other end of the spectrum 24% say it's Not Very Likely that Obama shares such views. Just 11% say it's Not at All Likely.
So voters think that Obama pandered by denouncing Wright, that he was not surprised by Wright's views, and that he probably shares them. This can be fixed, but I bet if you looked at the numbers of denunciations of surrogates in general, it doesn't look good unless it's quick and aggressive or not done at all. Stupid media politics is about being on offense, not defense.
This could be turned around into an attack, and it should be, but it wasn't. And so the controversy is on Wright, not the media or McCain's various controversial associates.
Before Jeremiah "Obama's Pastor" Wright spews even more nonsense, and quotes even more ambassadors, we want to shed some light on the brilliant gems uttered by some of McCain's own spiritual advisers, Pastor John Hagee and Reverend Rod Parsley. When Hagee endorsed McCain, because he is a man of principle, McCain said he was "very honored by Pastor John Hagee's endorsement." Reverend Parsley calls McCain a "strong, true, consistent conservative" and McCain calls Parsley "a spiritual adviser." Because the liberal media refuses to give any credit to McCain, it is up to us to be fair and balanced. So here are the top 10 Memorable Quotes said by McCain's religious advisers:
1. "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist."
- Pastor John Hagee in his book What Every Man Wants in a Woman (Charisma House, 2005)
2. "The Quran teaches that [all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews]. Yes, it teaches that very clearly."
-Pastor John Hagee
The "Reverend Wright is Wrong" refrain has been repeated endlessly this past week as pundits on both sides weigh in on the racial and religious controversy that's rocked the Obama campaign. Martin Luther King, Jr. touched on this not-so-divine divide 45 years ago:
"We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation."
Sunday morning in our household is, by contrast, the one time during the week when we suspend our secular segregation and tune in to the hot air from beltway blowhards on both sides of the partisan divide. On rare occasions, we even agree with an aside from George Will or a point made by Pat Buchanan.
But Wall Street Journal pundit Peggy Noonan literally gave us pause on Meet the Press yesterday when she responded to a question from Tim Russert about Obama's seminal speech so reasonably that we had to grab the remote, rewind, and relisten:
If you were wondering when the rightwing was gonna go after swiftboating Barack Obama, you might want to check out the WSJ's version today. The interesting thing is that, as I cruised through the progressive blogs today, I didn't see anything in the way of a defense, or even a mention of it happening. It seems eerily similar to mid-August 2004.
Jerome is wrong on the facts, since Wright has been discussed all over the blogs since this broke. Obama himself responded on the Huffington Post.
But he is not wrong on the larger point, which is that no one has mounted an effective defense for Obama against this attack. There's been a good amount of pontificating about whether Wright said the right thing or the wrong thing, but the real organizing and journalism in the progressive blogosphere has been focused on fighting Bush and the telecom industry on wiretapping. If Obama had led on this or any other fight, we could easily make the argument that the Wright discussion is a distraction from his leadership qualities and badgered various elites for their lack of focus on substance. But now there really is no argument. Wright is saying things that are politically difficult for Obama the brand to handle. They are stupid, Obama's a good candidate and he should not be held accountable for what his pastor says. Has Bush or McCain or Kerry or Clinton been held accountable for the speeches of their religious leader? Of course not.
But Obama is not a part of any progressive fights, so there's no independent organizing going on on his behalf from people who actually understand the right-wing media and how it operates. He's decided he's a post-partisan politician, and when a politician makes that choice, it's not just a disincentive for partisans to fight for that person. It becomes structurally impossible to fight for him because the incentives get all out of whack.
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