I personally had no idea of the rancor and hatred and depths of resentment held by the black populace of America, not just the radicals and fringe, but in the middle class, “Buppie” (Black Urban Professional), the church-going and “moderate” majority of blacks in the United States. The Wright affair, and the black reaction to it, has opened a lot of eyes.
Ok, now I’m back in the Hillary camp. Obama is deader than dead. I think many Americans, including myself, who disagrees with Obama on about everything, were a little excited at the prospect of a black president, kind of “that’ll show ‘em” to the rest of the world. I did truly believe he was above that race hustling mentality.
But the more I read about black churches, and the DEEPLY ingrained sense of victimhood and yes, resentment and hatred of whites that they preach in their CHURCHES for fuck’s sake, it really makes me despair. I truly think SOME blacks, and this includes some very influential and respected ones, have not come far at all in meeting whites halfway on this.
I think there are many whites who weren’t comfortable with a black man already, due to the flim flam demagogery of Jackson and Sharpton types, who will now run away from Obama in droves now that he has been exposed. Those more tolerant and non-color-influenced white voters who were ok with his color but didn’t want to support a race hustler have now been shown how they were deceived, and he’s lost them too.
I think he’s dead, deader than dead, in the general. It may have come so far that the Dems are forced to give him the nomination and throw away ‘08 in order to save the party, because its evident from the attitude of these preachers that blacks as a whole are going to see nothing wrong with what Obama or Wright said or did and are going to be FURIOUS, I mean rioting in the streets furious, ifhe is denied the nomination,and the Dem party without 90% of the heavily motivated black vote is no national party at all.
President McCain, here we come.
However, I don’t count out Hillary still grabbing the nomination. Obama, at this point, would be glad for a VP slot, I’m sure he realizes by now the enormity of this reversal.
However, Clinton would be mad to give it to him. He can only damage her now.
The Dems are in a dilly of a pickle, and I’m sure loving it, as a McCain supporter.
Obama has fallen from grace, and with him might go the chances of a black president for another generation. And, I aver, not because of white bigotry but because to get ahead in black politics, apparently you have to espouse a mind-set of victimhood and resentment tinged with racist separatist and black supremacy cant mixed with lunacy-rationalized government conspiracies.
Read this piece from Best of the Web this morning, reproduced almost entirely, because its all so cogent:
When Barack Obama yesterday condemned the most invidious remarks of his “spiritual mentor,” Jeremiah Wright, National Review’s Byron York was there. The auditorium at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, York reports, “was filled mostly with guests invited by the Obama campaign.” Unsurprisingly, they “thought he delivered a great speech.” Disturbingly, several whom York interviewed didn’t understand all the fuss about Wright:
“It was amazing,” Gregory Davis, a financial adviser and Obama supporter from Philadelphia, told me. “I think he addressed the issue, and if that does not address the issue, I don’t know what else can be said about it. That was just awesome oratory.”
I asked Davis what his personal reaction was when he saw video clips of sermons in which Rev. Wright said, “God damn America,” called the United States the “U.S. of KKK A,” and said that 9/11 was “America’s chickens . . . coming home to roost.” “As a member of a traditional Baptist, black church, I wasn’t surprised,” Davis told me. “I wasn’t offended by anything the pastor said. A lot of things he said were absolutely correct. . . . The way he said it may not have been the most appropriate way to say it, but as far as a typical black inner-city church, that’s how it’s said.”
Vernon Price, a ward leader in Philadelphia’s 22nd Precinct, told me Obama’s speech was “very courageous.” When I asked his reaction to Rev. Wright, Price said, “A lot of things that he said were true, whether people want to accept it, or believe it, or not. People believe in their hearts that a lot of what he said was true.”
Newsweek’s Lisa Miller reports on WashingtonPost.com that black religious leaders take a similar tack:
Last Friday, in an effort to gauge just how “out there” Wright’s sermons are in the context of the African-American church tradition, Newsweek phoned at least two dozen of the country’s most prominent and thoughtful African-American scholars and pastors, representing a wide range of denominations and points of view. Not one person would say that Wright had crossed any kind of significant line.
“An effort on the part of Christians–both clergy and laypersons–to critique the United States in light of what they understand as biblically based moral and ethical guidelines isn’t new,” explains Anthony Pinn, a professor of religious studies at Rice University. “There is a dominant style in black churches and Rev. Wright’s preaching is a prime example of this. . . . Some of what Rev. Wright says is controversial, but that doesn’t make him unique.”
The Rev. James Forbes, the recently retired longtime pastor of Riverside Church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side explained that, broadly speaking, there has been a historical division in the world of black churches. One group thinks you should work hard, keep quiet and get ahead; the other thinks that you need to agitate and provoke to make progress. Forbes puts himself in the first camp but supports Wright’s efforts. “Some of us wish we had the nerve that Jeremiah had,” he said. “We praise God that he’s saying it, so the rest of us don’t have to.” Does Wright ever cross a line? “I think if a person is a prophet and he’s not seen as ever crossing a line, then he has not told the truth as it ought to be told.”
And the Rev. John H. Thomas, general minister and president of Wright’s denomination, the United Church of Christ, issued a statement yesterday excusing Wright on the ground that it was wrong to remove Saddam Hussein from power:
Many of us would prefer to avoid the stark and startling language Pastor Wright used in these clips. But what was his real crime? He is condemned for using a mild “obscenity” in reference to the United States. This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Nearly four thousand cherished Americans have been killed, countless more wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered.
Where is the real obscenity here? True patriotism requires a degree of self-criticism, even self-judgment that may not always be easy or genteel. Pastor Wright’s judgment may be starker and more sweeping than many of us are prepared to accept. But is the soul of our nation served any better by the polite prayers and gentle admonitions that have gone without a real hearing for these five years while the dying and destruction continues?
Whatever one’s opinion of the Iraq war, this is a complete non sequitur. Wright is not responsible for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, and in any case there is no reason to think he has exercised any influence on it by virtue of striking an obnoxious tone. He is responsible for the spiritual sustenance of his congregation. Does he serve that responsibility well when he uses his pulpit to stir up parishioners’ hatred and anger?
As for “the soul of our nation,” we have heard a lot of late about America’s need for racial reconciliation. Thanks to the Obama-Wright episode, we also have learned that racial antagonism and anti-Americanism are much more common than we would have guessed among predominantly black congregations in America.
Is this not an obstacle to reconciliation? In 21st-century America, does any greater obstacle remain?
And white voters are diametrically differing in their perception of the affair d’ Wright, and its going to kill Obama nationally:
from Townhall:
And, voters are noticing, In Pennsylvania:
“People are not happy with Obama,” Gill said. “It’s the race stuff.”
“He lied to Anderson Cooper,” said Rodica Mitrea, an aesthetician and immigrant from Romania, referring to an Obama interview Friday with the CNN anchor.
“The speech plays only among the elites,” Ceisler said. “The average person on the street cares about the economy and the war and everyday life.”
Glenn Peter, 54, a patron at Rauchut’s Tavern, said he heard finger pointing, not reconciliation. He took issue with Obama’s explanation that Wright’s observations of a racist America were reflecting the racial scars of his past.
“I don’t want to hear that you are blaming us for him saying this,” said Peter, who is white and worked at an auto parts factory until it was shuttered several years ago. Cutting ties with the church “would have been the best way to do it. That way, I could have been able to listen to him again.”
“It was a great speech,” one man said. “But what concerns me is that on the website for his church, they say they are unabashedly Afro-centric. … The underlying message is they are perpetual victims and they enjoy the victim status and by proxy, me as a white person is their victimizer. And as long as we perpetuate these divisions, we will never heal.”
“Now I am 100 percent for Clinton and zero percent for Obama,” Mitrea said.
Joe Tobacco adds:
I doubt Obama is worried much at all, Doc — I think your initial read is correct. Democrats are Democrats after all, and much of our party is still chained to pushing racial issues in order to keep the minority vote sewed up. Obama’s got the nomination in his pocket, and he’s doomed in the general. The alternative, however, is unthinkable for the superdelegates and the party.
Dean is screwed as well. The Michigan / Florida fiasco is his last bray as an authoritarian donkey, and his unwillingness to budge in order to find an equitable resolution is typical Dean. He’s gone as DNC head come November.
And let me guarantee you this: It’s going to be my fault, and your fault that Obama flames out in the general. The accusations of racism and prejudice are going to fly so thickly against whites that the backdrop of Jeremiah Wright, who started this whole thing, will be drowned out. And we’ll all have taken a step backwards in racial relations, rather than forward, in service to a far left agenda that somehow continues to enthrall the national party.
Exactly. America is still too racist to elect a black man. That has been bandied about for some time, and liberal reporters were flummuxed over whether it was misogamy or racism that made voters either pick Hillary or Obama: either you hated blacks or women, that was what drove your vote.
I’ve been saying for some time that if 90% of whites voted en bloc like 90% of blacks, Obama wouldn’t have had a candidacy at all. However, since he’s only half-black, he’d have gotten half the white votes he has garnered, on a strictly melanin based voting pattern.
Its the politics, not the color of his skin, that has damned him. That GOD DAMN AMERIKKKA thing is just too resonant for white voters to ignore. I read all these lib blogs saying how great the speech was, greater than Lincoln. Bull. I don’t care how great it was. Politicians are always giving speeches, you think the average voter gives a fart in a stiff wind? They might have heard he GAVE a speech, that’s about it.
Nope, the soundbites are too rich, they feed in to fears that Jacksons and Sharptons have fed to whites for generations, and its doomed Obama. Even his staunch supporters are shaken and pissed off over the whole thing, and mostly pissed off how racist whitey won’t accept its our fault Obama’s minister is so angry. That was the subtext of Obama’s speech, and he may actually believe it.
I think he couldn’t say anything else, he was boxed in. Either lose whites or be called an Uncle Tom.
This is why the first black president will be conservative, unafilliated with the old school civil rights demagogue circuit.
Today I weep for the state of race relation in the US. I truly did not know how bad they were, I was under the mistaken impression things had come a long way. They have not, at least on the black side.
I have no idea if whites are to blame for this or not, but one side feeds the other. I guarantee, whites, finding out how blacks really feel, are not moved to sympathy or empathy, but to further isolation and separatism. And its a sad, sad day for us all.
The numbers are already coming in, and they ain’t pretty for Obama, but can the Dems jettison him now? Might be too late, and this is exactly the wrong issue on which to kill their messiah, if they want to retain any black votes in November:
SurveyUSA is out with polling in three states that looks ominous for Obama:
Ohio
McCain 44 – Clinton 50
McCain 50 – Obama 43For Obama, it’s a 17-point swing against him since the last SurveyUSA poll taken just three weeks ago, going up from up ten on McCain to down seven. Clinton has slipped four points over the same period but still leads McCain by six.
Missiouri
McCain 48 – Clinton 46
McCain 53 – Obama 39Again, Obama’s support slipped three points in Missouri while McCain’s rose five, giving McCain a substantial 14-point lead. Over the same period Clinton picked up four points on McCain according to the SUSA survey.
Kentucky
McCain 53 – Clinton 43
McCain 64 – Obama 28Not that Kentucky was in any danger of going blue, but McCain’s support jumped 10 points and Obama’s dropped five in three weeks. Clinton’s support remained steady, though she trails McCain by 10.
These are the kind of numbers that will give the superdelegates nightmares. Given Obama’s lead in the pledged delegates, the supers will face a tough decision should his general election prospects against McCain deteriorate.