Is for Obama to do whatever it takes to make these numbers stick, until the general election. Once we have a nominee (probably Obama), the Wright issue will come back in full force as the GOP tries to bring it back into the public consciousness.

I am hoping all the huffing and puffing over Wright will diminish the chances of McCain using against him in any substantial way. And given McCain's ties to his own brand of crazy religious folk, I don't think he is likely to go there. His surrogates, well , that's another matter.

The whole wrigth thing is going to be a problem for Obama  in the general election ,especially in states like Ohio , Pennsylvania , Florida and Missouri .

He might yet overcome it in the general but I think the story line been weaved around him by the GOP would stop him in a general election.

Thats just my gut feeling.

There is a discrepancy in the poll , he has such high favorables compared to Mccain and Hillary Clinton yet he still can't pull away from Mccain , he is basically running on the same margins against Mccain as Hillary .

How do you explain that ?

If Hillary clinton / John Mccain had a Klansman as their spiritual adviser for 20 years ,do you think they would not have trouble being president.

They are going to go after his patriotism and it would be damaging to him in my opinion.

One poll doesn't tell the story.

If you look at the quinnipiac polls in oh , fl , pa head II head , the wright thing seems to be having an impact

I wonder what the effect would be if Democratic 527s just matched the Repub ads 2 for 1 with clips of Haggee, Parsley and other right-wing crazies preaching their hate. In the MSM, there seems to be a reluctance to go after McCain on his religious associations, but in terms of ads, the sky's the limit.

I'm realizing that Americans are pretty stubborn.  They believe what they want to believe for good and for bad.    They want to believe his story because his story is a good one about America's potential.  Obama is always going to be the inexperienced uniter.  His hurdle is proving he's up to the job.  He'll always have to look on top of things b/c if he doesn't it'll kill him.  When Hillary made the mistake about the Russian president's name, no one cared b/c we think Hillary knows these things.  When she lied about sniper fire, it hurt her b/c of we think we can't trust her.

We'll never be able to take away McCain's hero status or his experience.  We have to hit him on being apart of the past (too old) and Bush III (100 year war).

...the CW is that the MSM has been treating him with kid gloves since day one. And, I'd definitely agree with that.

Your diary is very much in line with this sense put forth by the MSM to its broader audience, as well.

In fact, as long as you don't take into account the $200 million the Rethugs will spend between Labor Day and Election Day (and you do not take this into account at all) making certain the Wright matter is top-of-mind for every voter, housepet, and National Enquirer reader (housepets are too intelligent to read the Enquirer) in the U.S., your diary makes total sense.

But, to put forth the notion that this won't be front and center during the GE is sheer denial.

Does that mean Hillary, if she somehow miraculously were to obtain the nomination, wouldn't face a similar plight? Of course not. It'd probably be just as bad, if not worse. But, she's been there. She's done that. She's taken tons of punches. (If any folks state that HRC has had an easy time with the media, they know they're in the minority.)

But knowing that Hillary would be victimized by an even worse assault if she's our nominee does not validate your comments here, at all.

IMHO, this diary is wishful thinking. Very wishful thinking. In the real world, in U.S. presidential politics, this simply ain't gonna' happen--people aren't just going to miraculously "forget" about Wright if Obama's the nominee. The GOP will make certain that I'm right.

It's regrettable. And, I'll be voting for Obama if he does get the nomination. But, 527 money and Republican contributions dictate that your diary is way off the mark.

It's already out there.  Any attempt to bring it back up will be a rehash and less likely to have a real impact.

Rasmussen's tracking poll would indicate the Wright affair was a turning point.  My take after a quick read of this poll (CBS/NYT usually is the most favorable to Democrats) is:

1.  The economy is keeping Clinton alive for both the nomination and the general election.

2.  While Obama may have recovered from the Wright affair, there may still be some nagging doubts about him.

I would think BHO's lead in a CBS poll would be about 10% over McCain.  It isn't.

quelled the potential storm.

I know it did with my ultra conservative step-grandfather, who, before he saw (and later read) the speech, said that Obama didn't deserve to be the Democratic nominee of any office because Wright was his pastor.

After seeing and reading the speech, he changed his rhetoric dramatically.  He now says he can't support Obama because, even though he's a great orator, he doesn't have any breadth (whatever that means).

Also, he no longer believes Obama is a Muslim.

Now, there's no way in hell he'd ever vote for a Democrat.  But, for him to change his views about Obama so dramatically in such a short period of time....

Speaks volumes for Obama's ability to communicate to the public.

I will say it again . . . McCain is NOT Ghandi.

MoveOn.org is going to destroy him, and Obama will stay clean . . . and WIN!!

The only ones offended were the jingonistic Far Right, and they don't vote Democratic (except when HeadRush gives them marching orders to vote for Hillary).

... a serious attempt to hurt Obama by going after his relationship with Reverend Wright. The news media has reported on it but they are by and large friendly to Obama. Senator Clinton has said very little about Wright.

This will all change if Obama gets the nomination. The Republicans will come after him and come after him hard. Reverend Wright's statements, and Obama's 20 year relationship with Wright, will be used to call into question Obama's patriotism. This will happen.

In response to the Reverend Wright flap, Obama gave a speech about racism. He should have given a speech about patriotism.

Obama gave a brilliantly crafted speech, and the media openly stated that it would end Hillary's campaign if she let out a peep.  The left wing of our party had a group hug, and it was all cool.

But you haven't yet seen what this will be like when someone actually tries to hit him with it.  His pillow-fight primary with Hillary, which he has complained about being too hard and too long, is a love-tap compared to what's coming.

I happen to give him better odds than most Clinton supporters do.  I'm on record saying both are viable candidates.  But I'm also saying this: lull yourself into a sense of false security at your own peril.  GOP does not play nice, and they aren't fettered by the same restrictions that a Democratic opponent is during the primary.

I have a tough time believing this poll.

It could be the "bradley effect" here...but every 2nd person I talk to is turned off by Obama specially after the Wright episode.

Well, let's wait and see.. what happens at the polls.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/us/pol itics/04campaign.html?ex=1364961600& en=b121e08ffdcfbb54&ei=5124&part ner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Perhaps Obama's Magical Mystery Tour is losing steam... You can't stay on top forever.  That's why Obama and his cronies have spent time trying to get the little girl (or whore according to Randi Rhodes) to drop out.

But she's got too much support out there to just give up.  Hillary is the kind of fighter, the kind of leader, the kind of President we need in American NOW!

Hillary '08

The poll also said that his support is softening. Last month in this same poll it was 54/38. He has lost some male voters and some white voters according to NY Times.

... doesn't make it so.

The Republicans haven't had their chance to pound this over and over again. While it did get a huge amount of coverage, it was generally done in the context of a news media that is generally favorable to Obama and which swooned and fawned over his speech. Also, neither Clinton nor McCain pressed the issue.

It will be treated much, much differently by the Republicans in the summer and fall. Lee Atwater and Karl Rove would be ashamed if they didn't.

Unlike the 20 directs lies, flip-flops, and misstatements McCain has personally made, Obama has never said anything resembling what Wright said. So bring it on - this is a new age. YouTube and 2,000,000 diehard Obama supporters will make McCain hurt.

McNice versus McBush

McNice: Open to fair resolution to Immigration problem.
McBush: Sounds more hawkish on immigration than ever

McNice: Fought against Bush tax cuts - especially during War time.
McBush: Now Bush tax cuts are the lynchpin of his "economic" plan.

McNice: Fought against torture because it led to fake confessions like it did in his case in Vietnam.
McBush: Changed his stance on torture to allow the CIA to torture.

Other Favorite Hits (there are videos on all of these)

"Bomb, bomb, bomb...bomb, bomb --- Iran.."

The man has War in his DNA.

"100 Years War"

Let's keep our army everywhere we go. Like we have quadrillions of dollars to spend. I bet those bases look great...like the billion dollar embassy we are building in Iraq.

"Al-Qaeda is training in Iran and going back into Iraq."

Out top foreign candidate thinks that Shia and Sunni are working together? I am so glad a Democrat (?), Lieberman, was there to correct him.

"We shouldn't bomb Pakistan to fight Al-Qaeda."

McCain made fun of Obama in a 2007 debate and then Bush did the exact same thing Obama suggested we do. We flew drone led missions into Pakistan and killed several top Al-Qaeda operatives because Pakistan was too busy with internal strife to care about our little "war on terror."

And my favorite of all time...

"I don't know much about the economy..."

Should be fun!

Let's unite...let's get this started now so we have time to turn the tide against Wright-based attacks.

Obama + Clinton Supporters = Unstoppable!

"On the basis of such a theory, one might have assumed that fewer Americans would indicate that they believe Obama shares their values. However a new poll from CBS News and The New York Times indicates that the opposite is the case." Here's Ben Smith:

This, from a CBS/NYT poll of 1368 registered voters (.pdf) out this evening, cuts across quite a bit of conventional wisdom, and seems to suggest that attacks which really centered on Obama's values and patriotism haven't, yet, cut.

Do you think [candidate] shares the values most Americans try to live by, or doesn't (s)he?

Obama 70%
McCain 66%
Clinton 60%

Their writeup:

The biggest gap between Obama and Clinton on this comes from Republicans. Most Republicans, 52%, think Obama shares America's values but far fewer, only 27%, think Clinton does. Independents and Democrats think they both do, but Obama fares better here, too, by 13 points. Republicans and Independents both think McCain shares America's values, and half of Democrats do."

I am not even going to do an analysis....This is frail reed.  There is nothing in this question that would inherently bear on Wright.

This is a silly assumption....that this question has to do with Wright.

Simple   really.....

You want to know about Wright..ask about Wright or race or patriotism.....

I have long (as in long before the Wright hoopla) thought that America was just about sick and tired of being manipulated on the basis of race, and that Obama may be one of those classic "man for his time" chaps.

Yeah, he's a man, and a chap, and that totally sucks for women's equality. In the absence of Obama, it would clearly have been Hillary's time, and it would have been a profoundly good thing for America to have chosen a woman for President. She would be a good President.

Thing is, I thought Obama was the Right Person at the Right Time before race became a central issue. I guess it was inevitable that it would become one, and he has confronted it well so far, but these issues of sex and race, important as they are, have been subsumed by the greater issue of what kind of people we intend to be as a nation. Like it or not, we've defined ourselves as Bush people. I don't think we're proud of that, and I think we want to turn it around.

I don't think that anyone doubts that Hillary Clinton would be a scrappier counterpoint to the horrendous right-wing attack machine that has come to dominate American politics. She can take a punch, and give as good as she gets. However, it seems to me that what resonates most about Obama's message is the notion that an escalating tit-for-tat is a poor way to seek victory, much less greatness, much less happiness.

Obama has been nothing if not consistent in his argument in favor of honoring points of view with which he does not agree. This explains the seeming paradox of his "liberal" voting record, contrasted with his apparent willingness to accept conservative issue frames. It explains his acceptance of Dr Wright's impolitic language, and it explains his favorability among moderate Republicans and Independents. On the down side, it also explains his weakness among strongly partisan Democrats. I'll admit that I, for one, would enjoy a satisfying tat or two delivered to the noggins of a few (no, many) Republican tits. However, Obama speaks to something better in me, and, apparently, to many others as well.

This notion is a based on nothing but anecdotal evidence.
That being said I wouldn't underestimate the importance of his not giving up his friend and minister. I think for some people that  it was a positive that he distanced himself from Wright's words not from Wright.

Being a stand-up guy is very important,not dumping Wright over the side even though it would have been expedient not "acting like a politician" may have resonated with people.

They'd probably be more likely to frown at Obama for drop-kicking his pastor than for standing by him.

I think the Republicans may have shot themselves in the foot with this one. Their "Obama is a Muslim!" whisper campaign was doing some damage, and this noisy hullaballoo about "The pastor at Obama's church sometimes says controversial things while he's preaching and OMG Obama sat in the church every Sunday and listened to him!" has completely undermined it. Even low-information voters can't help but know the guy's a regular churchgoer now.

Anyone catch the story on CNN tonight about the Trinity United Church of Christ?  Or the AP article today?  

Both indicate that the painting of the church as a "hate mongering separatist snake pit" are wildly inaccurate.

Sadly, I'm still seeing lots of people around here parroting the same very right wing style attacks.  

Dean Scream Redux didn't work the second time around.

The Wright Distraction is dead.

'significant' lead over Hillary that peaked at 50-42 on March 3, 2008.

The funny thing, though, is going to Gallup and watching them track the spread which has been basically 3-4% for two straight months (with the occasional exception, as on March 3).  Gallup tries hard to make it exciting, though, with descriptions like: "nip and tuck", "front-runner", "slim advantage", "slight edge", "opening up an advantage", "lead has dwindled", "reversed momentum", "closely matched", "virtually tied".

I hate to tell Gallup, but there's not very much there there.  

I think it's hard to look at a poll and try to see in it the impact of the comments of Obama's retired pastor.  The Republicans will use Rev. Wright's comments if they are effective.  Otherwise they won't.  They will go with whatever moves numbers.

It is equally difficult to look at the poll and try to see the impact of Senator Clinton's lies about her trip to Bosnia.  Will the Republicans use the fact that she repeatedly lied, that she tried to defend her lies even after it was clear what had happened or that she tried to use lame excuses like sleep deprevation?  Again, they will go with whatever moves numbers.

Could you post a more desperate diary? Conventional wisdom shifted a week ago after the first polls on this came out with no noticeable change. I know there are those of you who go to bed praying that the Wright non-issue gets some traction, but it ain't gonna happen. At most he'll face some minor blip in the future, and that's only assuming the AP and other news orgs don't continue to interview members of Wright's church (of various races) who are willing to go on the record in defense of their pastor and church.

Instead of wishing that your candidate could luck into the nomination by hoping harm on her opponent, why not channel some of that energy into actually doing something positive?

Barack Obama's negatives have nowhere to go but up.

When the Republican noise machine gears up for the fall, and really starts running the heat against our nominee, there's going to be a fight to be fought--I'm not convinced Barack Obama is ready to handle that fight.

The Wright controversy is a tumor on the Obama campaign.  You can expect the Republicans to feed it like Hell as we get closer to November.

there to be a huge push from republican 527's to go after Obama's patriotism in the most extreme and vile ways possible, including Wright and whatever they wish to dream up - true or not.

I expect the same if Hillary is the nominee (obviously not using Wright) - and even possibly more vicious.

The fact of the matter is, no matter our candidate, the republican 527's are going to be well funded, vile, vicious, unrelenting and every other possible nasty thing they can be.

I think the crazy conservatives see the 527's as their only way to win this time.  They pretty much dont like McCain, but hes the best they have so they will do whatever it takes.

So am I concerned about what the republican 527's do?  From a human standpoint, of course.  I hate what the republicans have become and detest that wing of that party with every fiber of my being.  But am I concerned from an election standpoint?  Not really.

First, I cant make my dem decision based on who the republicans will attack harder or how hateful the republicans will be.  I just assume its a given that whomever our nominee is they will be painted like Hitler, Stalin and Osama Bin Laden all wrapped up into one.

Second, I think this election cycle, extreme hate will backfire.  As Bill famously said in 92 'its the economy stupid'.  All the wrapping up of hate in the american flags the republicans try and muster will fall on deaf ears.  Sure it will be music to the converteds ears, but it will turn off the majority of the middle electorate.

Espeically, I believe, if our nominee is Obama.  When times are tough, people want to believe in inspiration and positive change, which is the core of Obama's pitch.  Whether Obama is actually that or can deliver on that is validly up for scrutiny.  But its easy to see how much that message is resonating right now.  He has the right message at the right time.

Most people are sick to death of all the hate going around and its compounded when times are tough.  Life is bad enough right now without everyone hating on each other.

So I think as long as Obama keeps the same theme and doesnt implode, he can easily withstand the hate filled attack.

Will he take hits, of course.  Thats going to happen no matter what.

So I dont lose sleep at night worrying how extreme the right wing will be.  Its who they are and what they do.  I just believe the landscape as it is is not in favor of such vitriol and either of our candidates could easily overcome those obstacles.

I believe Sen. Obama gave a great speech about race but his speech was really sort of a separate issue. Within that speech, beyond denouncing what was "controversial" in Wright's sermons, he focused on his grandmother's "racial slurs that made him cringe," yet so far as we know he never sat down with his grandmother and tried to talk to her about that "cringe" on the principle of the 1947 film "Gentleman's Agreement" that the best way to fight racism (or reverse racism in Wright's case) is to be intolerant of intolerance, even amongst friends. The next day he reversed himself and denied his grandmother was intolerant, so he lost a bit of credibility there (what were the racial slurs if not intolerance?) and the media gave him a free ride on that particular thread, focusing mostly on his speech overall which was a masterful piece of writing.

With Rev. Wright, I would have expected Obama to have approached his good friend as a personal matter to express his concerns. So far as we know that never happened and he let Wright float out there as a loose cannon, not only in the context of Obama's personal political career but in the cultural evolution of relations between the races. Personally, as one who worked in the civil rights movement in the South in the 1960s, who attended Martin Luther King's "I have a dream speech" and who believes in non-violent change and non-violent and non-hateful rhetoric, to be saddled with Rev Wright is about as far away from MLK as we can get and extremely disappointing in the context of our effort to regain the White House with an African-American candidate. It might not be showing up in polls at this stage but saying the Wright affair has no impact on this election is wishful thinking.

That said, I'm not been knocked off my choice of Sen. Obama for president because I do realize he is a politician and I do realize he is not perfect and I do realize, among the three candidates, the other two are not choices I can accept.

We need a rule that Obama fans enforce on themselves, including the mainstream media national polls which mean nothing with their subjective "feel good about yourself" polling.

Drill down to the likely voters, and look at those results, and see how they've changed the GE match-up nationally; look at the state polling.

Come back and tell me when its changed since March 13th.

By many reasonable objective assessments the Wright affair should have been far more damaging to Senator Obama than the Tuzla incident  should have been to Senator Clinton.

Yet the contemporary tracking polls seem to indicate that Clinton took the bigger/longer hit.

Perhaps the  difference is that Obama responded better than Clinton.

Clinton has often claimed that she is / would be better at withstanding the Republican attack machine than Obama. Perhaps she is wrong.

And his church:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hYL_I CCVB3g8UAtMxocStkw0uwOgD8VQEMF80

Jerry Kellman, who hired Obama as a community organizer and is now a lay minister for Chicago's Catholic archdiocese, said Trinity offered a kind of home for Obama, particularly after he got engaged and was planning a family. Its members ranged from the wealthy and well-educated to families just scraping by, he said.

"When Barack joined the church, he wasn't giving his allegiance to Wright. He was joining a community," Kellman said.

Trinity, like other United Church of Christ churches, relies heavily on the membership to make decisions through boards and committees, he added. Even as senior pastor, Wright did not single-handedly control Trinity's direction.

Trinity was an early leader in ministering to people with HIV and AIDS. It offers housing and employment programs to people in need. It has scholarship programs and services for cancer patients, domestic abuse victims, drug addicts and more.

Members are expected to volunteer for one or more of these ministries. They usually announce their choice on the same day they're baptized, said Jane Fisler Hoffman, a United Church of Christ minister who joined Trinity.

"There's this kind of constant encouragement to live your faith, learn your faith," she said.

The church proclaims itself "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian." It supports charity work in Africa, gives some of its ministries Swahili names, uses Africa-themed decorations.

People familiar with Trinity compare its emphasis on African culture to the way some Catholic churches play up Irish or Italian roots. And they emphatically reject the accusations in widely circulated e-mails that the church is separatist or turns away white members.

"That's such a bunch of hooey," said Hoffman, who is white.

She tells the story of a group of young Germans visiting the church. Wright met with them before the service and prayed with them in German, she said. Later, he delivered part of his sermon in German and the choir sang in German.

"To me, it's a testimony that this is not a church that rejects people of other cultures and races," she said.

White evangelical preachers are damning America every Sunday usually over the sin of abortion. One of the most influential of Evangelical ministers compared abortion to the holocaust and America to Nazi Germany and he put it in writing in a book which has been very influential in Religious right circles. White ministers who regularly damn America are esteemed advisor's and confidants of Republican presidents.

No wonder that Mike Huckabee came to Obama's defense on this issue. I bet he has some incendiary language in some of his past sermons. The right will continue to hammer away on this (as will Clinton's surrogates and occaisionally Clinton herself) but the way Obama has been handling it, and from the results of polls thus far it may blow up in their faces. Attacking a church and it's congregation for the fire and brimstone rhetoric of it's preacher can be dangerous, it certainly has not worked for Democrats against white evangelicals.

Just when you think Obama should be down in the polls, miraculously his polls are up and a new reality emerges, renewing my hope for another Teflon presidency. Curious relationship...polls and Obama.

This is not the first post you've written about how the Wright controversy is not going to hurt Obama in the long run. I disagree completely. I think this controversy alone makes him unelectable. The Republicans will have a field day with Rev. Wright and they will not be intimidated by charges of racism and dirty politics. Too, I doubt very much that people who respond to pollsters are going to give the full, honest picture about how this incident has affected their view of him.

I think ultimately the Rev. Wright matter will destroy Obama in the GE, alongside the argument that he lacks experience.

I'm sorry, but a mere six years after the attacks on America, and the subsequent surge in patriotism, you truly believe that most Americans are not appalled that Obama listened to that material for 20 years? Mark my words, the Republicans will remind them of how appalled they are, if nothing else.

Thinking this won't hurt him is naive. Your polls are "whistling past the graveyard." I expect that if Obama is the nominee he will go down in a landslide defeat of McGovern proportions. No, this does not make me happy. But I think you young idealists are about to learn a very hard lesson. Unfortunately, you are going to take the rest of us in the party down with you, and we will have 4 more years of the same thing.