There has been buzz claiming that the Rezko "scandal" will be Obama's undoing.
For those who don't know, Obama purchased a house for $1.65M, which was, in his words, "a stretch." The home was half of a property that was being subdivided with the stipulation that both halves close on the same day; however Obama was financially unable to purchase the adjoining property. He had told his friends the Rezkos about his interest in the home; Rita Rezko purchased the additional (vacant) property for $625,000. Obama purchased some (a 10' strip) of this land from Rezko for $104,500; Rezko then sold the property for a net profit of $40,000.
The implication is that Rezko was doing Obama a favor in return for political favoritism. First of all, there is little evidence of this (the fact that Rezko made a $40,000 profit on the land deal hurts the bribery charge considerably). But more to the point, it is being asserted by Clinton supporters that this transaction will be a political drag on the Obama campaign in the generals, and thus we ought to all demand that he drop out, or something. This is simply untrue.
I assert that the general public has very little interest in financial scandals, particularly ones where there is little evidence of illegality. So, let's compare the public's interest in Rezko to, say, Wright:
("Wright" = blue, "Rezko" = red)
We can compare the search volume for the two terms using Google trends. Clearly (ignoring the fact that there's a steady baseline for Wright as a relatively common name) interest in the Wright scandal far outpaced that in Rezko, yet Obama seems to have weathered it just fine.
Compare this to the Swift boating of Kerry:
("Swift boat" = blue, "Rezko" = red)
Notice that interest in the Swift boat story peaked around 15X higher even though the news reference volume is almost identical! This thing is simply a non-issue, and at this point there is no evidence that new revelations are going to come out to change that.
No, the Rezko affair will have as much impact on Obama as the Hsu connection (yes, I am aware that your candidate is not spotless) will on Clinton - that is to say, none. People know politicians make deals, they think they all do it, and for the most part they're right.
As I keep arguing, if Clinton supporters want to go after my candidate, by all means, go for it - he's got weaknesses, just as she does. But if you're going to practice armchair punditry, at least make some effort to think about the way American politics works.
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