Obama’s Pastor Troubles

Obama’s association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is likely a very serious blow to his aspirations for the Presidency, if not the Democratic nomination.

It is so serious because it undermines the very core of his campaign: his call for unity, and end to divisiveness and polarization, and a post-racial politics.

The Rev. Wright, who is the pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ which Obama and his wife, Michelle, have attended for 20 years sounds more like Chuck D, the leader of the rap group, Public Enemy, than he does Martin Luther King Jr. In other words, he sounds like a lot of politically aware, black power activists of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, a constellation that also includes the Black Panthers.

Nothing wrong with this, and much of what these groups have said about racism, exploitation, and the bad actions of the United States domestically and abroad are true, at least to a point. The problem for Obama, is, that to be so closely associated with someone who (1) represents the far left wing of the political spectrum and (2) is so unabashed about his belief that at some level black and whites cannot reach common ground is pure political poison.

Many white liberals and blacks who are now supporting Obama will probably continue to do so despite his close connections to Wright. Much of what the pastor says is not so far from liberal positions and when all is said and done doesn’t amount to a rejection of the United States, and is simply strong but frequently fair, if heavy-handed, criticism of it. Liberals, too, are used to the black power posturings and, as Tom Wolfe has famously captured in his 1970 story, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, even welcomed it.

It is the independent and even Republican voters (so-called Obamakins), whose shoes your currently hear slapping the earth as they run away from Obama and likely into the camp of McCain. And the lunch bucket Democrats in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and West Virginny, all upcoming primaries, any chance they will vote for Obama now? Forget about it.

Race has largely taken a holiday in the Democratic race but it raised its head as early as South Carolina and has been simmering under the surface ever since. Ironically Obama won a huge victory there in terms of percentage of votes but a dangerous schism developed, with Clinton and Edwards getting a large majority of white voters, and Obama black voters. With a few exceptions, even after Edwards dropped out of the race, this kind of racial and economic split has continued--Obama now gets 80 and sometimes 90 percent of all black voters. Obama has in no way been marginalized in the way that Jesse Jackson was but it certainly appears that he has been among the crucial constituency of so-called lunch bucket Democrats, something that his association with Wright is certain to exacerbate.

While there is little to indicate that Obama shares Wright’s view of black and white relations or even his radical liberalism, perception in politics is, if not everything, nearly everything. And, frankly, Obama’s response to the videos in which Wright castigated and damned the US for its bad actions in Vietnam, South Africa, etc., or said, with respect to 9-11 that America’s “chickens had come home to roost,” just isn’t believable. Even his supporters must find it very difficult to believe that Obama hasn’t, as he has claimed to all the news programs and his Internet blog on Huffingtonpost, been present or wasn’t aware of such preaching on the part of the pastor in the past, especially as Wright was the campaign’s spiritual advisor, inspired the title of his book, Audacity of Hope, and baptized his children. Sure sounds like the same old politics to me. Understandable perhaps, but not when your whole campaign is based on judgement and a new kind of politics.

As damaged as I believe Obama is from his association with Wright, he may well win the Democratic nomination. The delegate math is becoming ever more favorable for him and just recently he has picked up delegates Iowa and Texas in a kind of after caucus in which the delegates are actually awarded. In Iowa, many of the Edwards delegates have since moved to Obama. Clinton will almost certainly not catch him in this measure and likely won’t do so in the popular vote either.

And who knows what the superdelegates will do. If Obama wins the delegates and popular vote they may have little choice but to vote him even though it looks, increasingly, like he will be unelectable in November, when the Democrats' chickens are likely to come home to roost.

Bill Clinton’s comment about Hillary being completely vetted as a result of her past experiences in a way Obama never has, is looking more and more perspicacious as the Democratic campaign rolls on.