Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > March > 19
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Better not abandon Hillary just yet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama sufficiently shored up his effort to win the Democratic nomination with Tuesday’s speech that attempted to explain the incendiary rhetoric of his preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But it’s getting increasingly difficult to see him as the Democrat who can win the presidency this year. The speech wasn’t that good.
While more eloquent than most, it was a rehash of arguments that have been aired and debated for decades in defense of programs to enact or preserve racial preferences in hiring, admissions and contracting, and to pour more public money into the same failed approaches to schools. In short, it was liberalism earnestly presented as a dialogue on race.
But when the dancing was done, there was still Jeremiah Wright’s rhetoric — and the fact that, regardless of whether Obama was present in the congregation on any given Sunday, the minister’s extremism could not have been missed by any person exposed to the larger community. And yet, Obama never walked away. His speech Tuesday doesn’t really explain his inaction — or, at least, the inaction of a person who aspired to lead all of America.
So this fall we will have two Democratic candidates — and maybe three or more. One will be Obama, the agent of change who will gussy up liberalism and attempt to pass it off as something virginal and virtuous. And there’ll be Michelle Obama — “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country…” And there’ll be Wright. And all that footage of rhetorical extremism.
The Democrats’ superdelegates had best not squeeze Hillary out too early. Obama may have talked his way through to the Democratic nomination — but one speech barely begins to repair the damage Obama’s association with Wright has caused.
