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Well, this week he got it back in North Carolina and to a great extent in Indiana. Richard Nordan, a white North Carolina voter told ABC News, “This country needs youthful idealism and Sen. Obama has brought that out and I appreciate that.”
And even though the TV pundits and the op-ed columnists have declared Obama the winner, Clinton says she’s going to keep going—to West Virginia, next Tuesday, which she is expected to win, to Kentucky on May 20, which she is also expected to win, and to Puerto Rico on June 1, which also favors her. If this thing continues, Obama is expected to win Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. And the Superdelegates continue to peel off in his direction. The math and the momentum are with him.
But Clinton tells USA Today, “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on, citing an AP article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states[North Carolina and Indiana] who had not completed college had supported me. There’s a pattern emerging here.” 
Wright exploded some political depth charges at the Obama campaign on Monday, April 28, at the National Press Club. Wright went so far as to say to his friendly audience that if Obama had not said what he said in his highly regarded Philadelphia speech on race in America on March 18, he would never get elected. As he tried to cut Wright loose this week in North Carolina, Obama said, that comment indicated, “…a show of disrespect to me and it is also, I think, an insult to what we’ve been trying to do in this campaign.”
What Obama has been trying to do lately is ditch Hillary Clinton, but, if the polls are any indication, she’s probably going to remain in this thing for the long haul, perhaps even up to the Democratic National Convention. Meanwhile, the Wright stuff— his suggestion among other things that the U.S. government has been infecting American citizens with AIDS, his praise of Louis Farrakhan and other comments sure to endear him to undecided white Democratic voters—follows Obama everywhere he goes.
Pick up this morning’s Washington Post and you read columnist and Inside Washington panelist Charles Krauthammer’s view that Obama’s Philadelphia speech and his comments in North Carolina this week amount to “cheap rhetorical tricks.” Says Krauthammer, “This 20-year association with Wright calls into question everything about Obama.”
On this week’s Inside Washington, Mark Shields observed that you can drive from Massachusetts through Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania to Ohio, without hitting a major state that went for Obama. What’s the problem?
Democrat Pollster Peter Hart, who does the Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll, says Obama needs to make people feel safe,
not only as commander-in-chief, but also in terms of shared cultural values, which takes us back to the elitist label that was Obama’s albatross in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. As Mark Shields says, the voters need to see Obama taking his kids to the park.
All of the Inside Washington panelists agree that Clinton ran a better campaign in Pennsylvania, connecting well with blue-collar white voters, redefining herself, as Charles Krauthammer observes, culturally, although not ideologically.
The announcer began each week’s program by promising, “…a tale well-calculated to keep you in suspense.” That is a fair description of the current Democratic Presidential nominating process. In Pennsylvania yesterday the message blue-collar white voters had for Barack Obama, was, “Sorry, wrong number.”
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, says this endless primary season is more like the Bill Murray movie, “Groundhog Day.” In Milbank’s version, “Punxsutawney Hillary,” as he calls her, saw her shadow last night in Pennsylvania, so we’re in for six weeks more of this. Actually, until June 3rd.
With nine more primaries to go, it’s hard to see how Senator Clinton comes from behind to win in popular votes or delegates. The Clintonians expect to win West Virginia (May 13th), Kentucky (May 20th) and Puerto Rico (June 1st).
The Obamians believe they will win Guam (May 3rd), North Carolina (May 6th), Oregon (May 20th) and Montana and South Dakota (June 3rd), and they hope to head Clinton off at the pass in Indiana (May 6th), as they were unable to do in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
But we don’t need Bernanke to tell us that things are tough. Just ask truck drivers, who have to suffer through escalating fuel prices. One of them told ABC News in despair this week, “We have empty pockets now. We really can’t do nothing about it.”
Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) tried to hold the feet of the top oil company executives to the fire at a hearing this week, but he didn’t have much luck. Said Markey, “As these consumers are at the pump being tipped upside down and having money shaken out of their pocket, your message to them is that you can’t do anything for them.”
Said the avuncular John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil, “When our costs are too high for Shell, we make choices about what not to do and one choice that consumers could make is to drive less.”
This is not a viable solution for truck drivers or even for commuters who must put in 50 to 60 miles or more each day to get to work and back. You could argue that they could walk the last 10 which would benefit to their health, but your argument would probably meet with heavy resistance.
She’s leading in the Pennsylvania polls, but not the latest national Wall Street Journal/ NBC poll conducted by Democrat Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff. According to Hart and McInturff, Clinton and Obama are in a dead heat with registered Democratic voters— 45 percent each, a small increase for Obama from the numbers two weeks ago. Apparently the Reverend Wright uproar hasn’t hurt Obama that much. Also, Clinton’s negatives increased and her positives decreased by greater percentages than Obama’s.
But the bitter, seemingly unending contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has cost them both. According to Hart and McInturff, about a fifth of Clinton voters say they’ll go with McCain if she fails to win the nomination. And a fifth of Obama voters say the same thing if he doesn’t win.
In this week’s column Inside Washington panelist Charles Krauthammer says the Obama and Clinton’s oft-repeated claim that McCain is willing to keep the troops in Iraq for another 100 years is a “dirty” lie. Although Charles is not with us this week, the other panelists tend to agree. What McCain was talking about back in New Hampshire when the subject came up was the sort of presence we have had for more than a half-century in Japan and South Korea. Said McCain, such a presence in Iraq, “…would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.”
The other Inside Washington panelists, Washington Post columnist Colbert King, NPR’s Nina Totenberg and columnist Mark Shields, do not agree. Shields argues that the Obama speech is a profound political statement, tackling complex social issues that other politicians would run from.
Several Washington political junkies with whom I have spoken since Obama made his speech, are of the opinion that for Obama to have cut his friend, former pastor and spiritual mentor loose after a relationship spanning more than two decades would have been an act of political cowardice.
“I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother,” Obama said, “a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
Charles Krauthammer argues that Obama’s grandma gets a bad rap in that speech, that she never spread racial hatred as he alleges Rev. Wright did.
My question: Will Rev. Wright prove to be Barack Obama’s political Achilles heel? Even a cursory perusal of the internet on the subject reveals that there are those who are trying desperately to make it so.
If you haven’t seen or read the full speech click below to take you to the ABC News web site.
This week we heard former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro defend her earlier comment that Obama is where he is only because he is a black man, that if he were a white man he wouldn’t be in his current position—namely, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential campaign, which he is, despite the fact that the Clinton’s have generously offered him the number two spot (That has to be a historical first. Can you spell “Chutzpah”?) Later, Ferraro tried to bail herself out by saying, “I was celebrating the fact that the black community has come out with a pride in his historic candidacy and has shown itself at the polls. You’d think they’d be saying, ‘Thank you,’ instead they’re calling me racist.”
Well, Obama did not say, “Thank you.” He did say Ferraro’s remarks were ridiculous and wrongheaded, but he says he doesn’t think she intended them to be racist. .
Barack Obama learned that on Tuesday when after 11 straight wins, while closing in the polls, he lost three states to Hillary Clinton.
Now consider John McCain’s apparent free lunch. Charles Krauthammer says the man makes him believe in resurrection. Last summer McCain was flying commercial, riding in the back of the plane next to the toilets. On Tuesday he sewed up the Republican Presidential nomination. Amazing.
As the panelists on Inside Washington observed this weekend, the economy is tanking, and we’re in an unpopular war with a lame-duck unpopular president as Commander-in-Chief, all of which would appear to be a heavy burden for McCain and tailor-made for a Democratic victory in November.
The Democrats? They’re too busy fighting each other to beat up on McCain...says Clinton, “Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign. I will bring a lifetime of experience and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002.” Sounds like Clinton and McCain are running mates.
One of Obama’s top advisers, Samantha Power, shot off her mouth to reporter Gerri Peev of The Scotsman newspaper, telling her that Clinton, “…is a monster…she is stooping to anything.” Power, born in Dublin, a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School and a Pulitzer prize-winning author, is now off the campaign.
So McCain, as Politico’s Jonathan Martin notes in this week’s Inside Washington, has the whole gym to himself. He can raise money, of which he hasn’t very much. He can hire staff—he hasn’t had many bodies in his ad hoc campaign, and he can start thinking seriously about policy positions other than where he stands on the war in Iraq. What a gift. For now.
You can shoot free throws all day long when you’re in the gym by yourself, but it will never sharpen your game.
- The Inside Washington ViewThe pressure is mounting in the race for the White House as Obama lands a crucial nomination.
- “The Speech”Will Rev. Wright prove to be Barack Obama’s political Achilles heel?
- The Inside Washington View“Race and Gender. Is this campaign about anything else?”
- The Inside Washington ViewJohn McCain’s free lunch...
- The Fight of the Century (The 21st Century)Can Obama Take a Punch?
- A Free Ride?Is the Press piling on Hillary Clinton and giving Obama a pass?
- Lean and mean or just lean?Observations on the campaign coverage.
- McCain vs. the New York TimesMcCain vs. the New York Times
- The Surge FactorWhat impact does a successful surge in Iraq have on the Democratic presidential campaign?
- The Post Chesapeake Primary Hillary BluesThe Bad News For Senator Clinton from the Exit Polls
- And This is Just the PrimaryVoters turnout big time on Chesapeake Tuesday.
- The Yogi FactorWhat do the Super Tuesday exit polls tell us?
- A Cautionary TaleNews from your friendly poll-reader.
- The Plot ThickensThere are no sure things in the current presidential primary season.
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