Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: April 29, 2008, 9:47 am

The speech is not obsolete unless you below to the what-have-you-said-to-me-lately school of communication. It either was a good speech or it wasn’t. In my book it can be a circumstanial speech on the goodness scale. It stands alone as a strong and courage speech, a classic.

We should give another speech but about class, about middle class values, and his priorities to address these inequalities. In this kind of speech he can reference Wright again. But it should not be about race…again.

But I disagree with the wind-direction-of-the-day that Wright is doing Obama damage. He doesn’t need a shouting match with Wright. And it is clear that up until a few days ago, Wright had not cause him any significant problem. That remains to be seen and it will show up in the voting next week in North Carolina and Indiana. If he looses both, and Wright was the reason, I would expect a major recasting for the remaining primaries. But keep in mind that Hillary needs to win ALL the remaining primaries by 65 percent to pull even in the delegate, a threshhold she only achieved in Arkansas.

By Obama’s analysis — the one that counts — he failed to close the margin further than the 50 percent level he did achieved in Pennsylvania, because he went off message and went negative (old politics) on Hillary in the last two weeks. Based on that analysis, he has retooled his approach and strategy.

Comment from Leftcoast
Time: April 29, 2008, 10:56 am

Wright has been Obama’s Achilles Heel from the get-go, Josh. He’s fatal for Obama in the general–the only reason Obama appears to have gotten through the initial crisis is that Hillary, despite your opinion to the contrary, didn’t really press the issue as strongly as the Pugs will.

As for Obama’s race speech, for me, it was a transcendent moment, truly. But in the pragmatic win/loss column of electoral politics it was a neutral event, and proof positive that new politics in the way you describe them, really don’t work. if it had neen effective, the media would have used Obama’s speech to marginalize Wright. Instead, Wright is front and center, and sucking the life out of Obama’s campaign. I really think it’s going to be difficult for Obama to survive this.

Comment from bdr
Time: April 29, 2008, 11:39 am

Left, go to the link I gave and see an update about a call for Hillary to make a “race speech.”

Where I think you and me disagree is that Hillary did all she needed to to give the GOP impetus to keep pushing the story. You don’t think she’d have gone further if she thought she needed to?

My sarcastic call for a second speech is because the first speech wasn’t transcendent or we wouldn’t be here.

The point I’ve been trying to make, and I apologize if I’ve been too obscure, is that Obama won if he could keep the impetus, if he’d had the vision to stay ahead of the shitstorms, to confront them on his terms.

That he’s confronting the shitstorms only after trying to avoid them and then only when he has to, all impetus is lost, as is his air of difference.

By the way, I add the links so I don’t steal all the bandwidth here. There’s always more to what I’m saying here over at BLCKDGRD.

And, Groom, you’ve been quiet. You OK?

Comment from Leftcoast
Time: April 29, 2008, 1:13 pm

BDR: I think we agree on most points, but I think you give Hillary more Machiavellian credit than she deserves. To do so implies that there is thought and a strategy. Given her campaign, I don’t think either applies. I agree that Obama would win if he could keep the impetus. But like many other Dems before him, I’m not sure that he or his staff understand how things really work.

Comment from isabellav
Time: April 29, 2008, 1:54 pm

Someone should point out that the continuing controversy over Wright is the media’s promotion and doing. They are doing everything possible to discredit the only legitimate candidate in the field. Even MSNBC puts racists on their commentary punditry show to espouse what they think of Obama.
Who is more racist than John Hagee in San Antonio? No one is asking John McCain to “explain” him over and over again.

The media picks and chooses what to show and what not to show, so let’s spread the word ourselves.

So what did Buchanan say??
Pat Buchanan, in his official blog, posted a blog called A Brief for Whitey. In this Brief for Whitey, he goes on to say:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships…and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing…

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

I would comment on what he says, but I’ll let you form your own opinions. Read the entire blog here, at Pat Buchanan’s Official Site http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=969

Pass it on. We can’t let the media decided for us what is important and what isn’t.

Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: April 29, 2008, 2:21 pm

Well done, isabellav.