Here’s the full video of the statement that Barack Obama gave prior to taking questions today:
All I can say is that it’s a far cry from his Philadelphia speech a month ago where he said:
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – 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.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
And yet today, five weeks later, he has not only thrown Jeremiah Wright under the bus, but thrown him to the wolves.
Why didn’t he do this sooner ? Why did he invite, then uninvite him from his campaign kickoff event last February ? And does anyone really believe that you can know someone for 20 years to the point where they married you, baptized your children, blessed your new home, and preached in your church every Sunday and yet claim that this isn’t the person you thought it was ?
Those, at least, will be the questions that the Sean Hannity’s of the world will continue to ask from now and, assuming Obama is the Democratic nominee, all the way until November.
The question, though, is whether this speech will be enough.
On some level, it depends on what Wright himself does next. Judging from his performance at the National Press Club, the guy clearly loves the spotlight. It seems unlikely that he’ll give it up. But that may actually play to Obama’s benefit on some level. The more Wright sounds like an idiot and cozys up to men like Louis Farrakhan with Obama now on the record, the less this is likely to harm him.
Second, I don’t know what else Obama could have done or said at this point. Yes, he should have done it sooner. While the Philadelphia speech was a fine speech on race and religion, it wasn’t the politically smart thing to do — the politically smart thing to do was what Obama said today; denounce Wright without equivocation and try to get the story behind you.
Finally, at this point whatever damage the Wright story has done to Obama has already been done and may well be hard to undo. But, at the very least, this should stop the bleeding.
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April 29th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
[...] VirtuconThe Write Side of My BrainCollege Republican Federation of VirginiaBelow the Beltway here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. (WHEW!!!)The Contemporary Conservative here, [...]
May 1st, 2008 at 6:54 am
[...] point Barack Obama has nobody to blame for his Rev. Wright problems but himself. If he had given the speech he gave earlier this week back in March, rather than the “I can no more disavow him” speech he gave in [...]