Jeremiah Wright Still Haunts Obama
That’s the conclusion Michael Barone draws from the exit polling from Kentucky and West Virginia. ese are the key paragraphs from his column:
Now West Virginia and Kentucky are not typical primary states. They, together with Arkansas, where Hillary Clinton was first lady for 12 years, were Obama’s weakest states in this year’s primaries. And some percentage of registered Democrats in these states have been voting Republican in recent presidential elections. Nevertheless, the negative verdict these voters render on Obama’s honesty and his relationship with Wright is likely to be typical of some significant quantum of potential Democratic voters this year. And not just in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which he will certainly lose, but in marginal states which he must carry in order to be elected.
I find confirmation from this in a recent focus group conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center by pollster Peter Hart (for whom I worked for seven years) of non-primary voters in Charlottesville, Va. As Hart and Alex Horowitz note in their analysis of reactions to Obama, “When asked to recount any two memories of the total presidential campaign so far, seven of the 12 participants cite Rev. Wright by name. So far, clips of Rev. Wright clearly are the one ‘key defining moment’ of this campaign.”
Most reporters are liberals, whose circles of friends and acquaintances have included people with views not dissimilar to those of Wright or William Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground bomber with whom Obama served on a nonprofit board and at whose house his state Senate candidacy was launched. Such reporters don’t find these views utterly repugnant or particularly noteworthy. But most American voters do. And they wonder whether a candidate who associates with such people agrees with them, or disbelieve him when he says he doesn’t.
It’s been three months since the Wright tapes appeared. It’s been a month since Sen. Obama denounced Jeremiah Wright. Still, more people don’t trust Sen. Obama now than they did at the start of this process. In fact, I wonder how badly he’d get beat if the Wright tapes came out a month before the Iowa Caucuses.
That doesn’t mean that I think Hillary should win. I don’t because she ran a pathetic campaign the first month or so.
I’ve predicted that Jeremiah Wright wouldn’t be the topic in September and October but that he’d still be influencing the race because he’s already done his damage. We’ve said all along that nobody believes Sen. Obama when he said that he didn’t know about Wright’s inflammatory sermons. Now the exit polling and focus groups are bearing that out.
Another thing that will weigh Sen. Obama down more as the campaign rolls around is Michelle Obama. Sen. ‘Everything is offlimits’ says that people can’t talk about her. I wasn’t planning on asking his permission on that so I’ll just keep talking about her. The fact that Sen. Obama doesn’t want the press talking about her suggests that she’s got a bunch of skeletons in her closet that will turn voters off.
She’s already made a number of offputting comments while stumping on the campaign trail. If anything, she’s more anti-American than Jeremiah Wright. She’s possibly more elitist than Sen. Obama. the more Sen. Obama is vetted, the less likeable he’ll become.
Finally, people’s opinion of Jeremiah Wright will drop even more once they find out about Wright’s retirement home. Here’s what Fox New’s Jeff Goldblatt wrote about Wright’s retirement home:
A two-week FOX News investigation, however, has uncovered where Wright will be spending a good deal of his time in retirement, and it is a far cry from the impoverished Chicago streets where the preacher led his ministry for 36 years.
FOX News has uncovered documents that indicate Wright is about to move to a 10,340-square-foot, four-bedroom home in suburban Chicago, currently under construction in a gated community.
There’s apparently nothing illegal about the church buying Jeremiah Wright a home. That said, how much will his credibility drop when it’s revealed that he’s gone from preaching about social justice to living in a rich gated community? Wil people wonder if Wright is just another race hsutler in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Will that cause the New Media to question whether Sen. Obama is a man of the people or if he’s a man of luxurious living?
Whatever the answer to that question, it’s clear that it won’t help Sen. Obama this fall.
Technorati Tags: Obama, Michelle Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Anti-Americanism, Trustworthy, Exit Polling, Focus Groups, Peter Hart, Blue Collar Workers, Election 2008
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
May 25th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
The fact that Barack Obama stayed listening to Rev. Wright tells me that he agrees with what his pastor said and did not find what he said offensive. Rev. Wright is a racist against white people and is anti-American. Obama’s associations tell me a great deal about his views.