The Obamage done

This is from the Corner:

Polling Wright [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Rasmussen:

Most voters, 56%, said Wright’s comments made them less likely to vote for Obama. That figure includes 44% of Democrats. Just 11% of voters say they are more likely to vote for Obama because of Wright’s comments.

This is disturbing:

However, among African-Americans, 29% said Wright’s comments made them more likely to support Obama. Just 18% said the opposite while 50% said Wright’s comments would have no impact.

- end of initial entry -

N. writes:

The figures tell me that a majority of people find the few comments of Wright that have been publicized to be very offensive. Given the wealth of material that is available, this number should increase. It also tells me that a significant number of American blacks agree with Wright, as demonstrated by the poll numbers. Thus we have yet again more hard evidence of the reality of black racism and hatred.

This campaign has already exposed to the nation some ugly truths that liberals have worked hard to keep under wraps, and it is not even summer yet.

LA replies:

Just to underscore: 79 percent of blacks either respond positively or have no negative response to Wright’s statements.

Harry Horse writes:

LA: “Just to underscore: 79 percent of blacks either respond positively or have no negative response to Wright’s statements.”

I’m shocked!

LA writes:

Correction:

The numbers I just quoted had to do with blacks’ views of Obama, not of Wright. On Wright they are more critical. According to Rasmussen, 58 percent of blacks see Wright’s comments as racially divisive, and 77 percent of whites. So a majority of blacks disapprove of Wright’s comments, though a smaller number transfer that disapproval onto Obama.

At the same time, 42 percent of blacks do not see Wright’s anti-white statements as racially divisive.

It’s still bad, but it’s not as bad as I initially thought.

Another problem is that the Rasmussen article on the Rasmussen poll gives no idea of what Wright comments the respondents were asked about. How can we judge the significance of this poll, without seeing the questions that the respondents were actually asked?

LA writes:

And by the way, the revelations about Obama, and the continued black support for him, show why I say that an Obama presidency would offer positive possibilities. Let’s say the Democratic Super Delegates, looking at Obama’s current problem, decide to go for Hillary as the safer candidate. From that point, Obama and Wright and the black racial attitudes uncovered by this affair would cease to be on the front pages. The Black Liberation Theology would be forgotten and would have a limited effect on Americans’ understanding. But let’s say that Obama became president. For four years white America would be confronting the reality of black anti-white beliefs in the person of President Obama himself (who is too deeply associated with those beliefs through his 20 year attendance at Wright’s church plausibly to dissociate himself from them), his wife, many of his black supporters, and the white leftists who rationalize the black racism. This continual confrontation will impress deeply on whites the truth of where a large number of blacks are really coming from, and so permanently relieve them of the suicidal liberal illusion that blacks (and as well as Hispanics, Muslims, and so on) are “just like us” and “want the same things as us.” Seeing the truth of that illusion for the first time, they will be fortified to resist liberalism and will thus have a chance to save America.

Mark Jaws writes:

Now that the Obamage has been done, we have to weigh carefully the balance between McCainiac judges, who are much more likely to support the constitutionality of pro-white movements, as opposed to the white awakening one would hope result from such an outing of black racism and hatred via an Obama presidency. Although I am ready to make lemonade from whatever lemons fall from the skies of political misfortune, I am thinking, with the white public now aware that 79% of blacks support Wright, maybe we have already achieved a mini-awakening of sorts and McCain will serve our interests better. I will probably think something else tomorrow.

Mark K. writes:

In CNN’s article about Obama’s speech tomorrow, he previews what he is going to say by stating, “I think the caricature that is being painted of him [Wright] is not accurate, and so part of what I will do tomorrow is to talk about how these issues are perceived from within the black church community for example which I think skews this very differently.”

This is a huge mistake on his part—to try and mitigate the whole Wright issue by demonstrating that it may be a question of “interpretation.” Better to admit the wrongness of it and be done. Trying to put a spin on it by placing it in a certain social context just opens up a can of worms for him. He’s be better off simply to state that such sermons were wrong and move on. In other words, throw Wright under the bus (like jettisoning Jonah) and just keep rolling…

LA replies:

How can he do this? As the commenter at the LA Times said whom I quoted earlier today, two years ago, maybe he could have moved on. Maybe at the beginning of the presidential campaign he could have moved on. Now he can’t. He’s married to that church. He’s associated forever with Wright’s sermons. He can’t erase 20 years of his life. He has no choice but to put lipstick on the pig.

I can’t see how he can do this. And I also can’t see how, alternatively, he can say he never heard these sermons.

To sum up:

• He can’t say it was wrong and move on.

• He can’t successfully re-interpret the sermons as a “black cultural thing” that has no real meaning.

• He can’t claim he didn’t hear them.

So I don’t see where he goes. What he’ll probably do is fudge, and hope the public “gets used to it,” as it “got used” to Monica Lewinsky. And given the way liberalism has extracted judgment from the American soul the way a dentist extracts a tooth, there’s some chance he will succeed. But not much chance. Wright’s anti-Americanism and anti-whiteness are too blatant. Also, this issue does not have the advantage of being a “private,” sexual matter.

So those are the calculations on one side. On the other side, we just don’t know. One of the characteristics of modern liberalism is that any outrage, any transgression of standards is possible and may even become the norm.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 17, 2008 01:57 PM | Send