Say Anything Blog

Barack Obama continues his scramble to distance himself from Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright:

(CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama says in an interview scheduled to air on TV Friday that he would have left his church if his pastor had not retired and had not acknowledged making comments that “deeply offended people.”

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Bulletins from Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ in 2007 include comments — reprinted from other sources — that maintain South Africa and Israel worked on “an ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs.” They also quote a historian who said that “what the Zionist Jews did to the Palestinians is worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews.”

The big question is: Would Obama be saying he “would have left” if Rev. Wright’s bigoted comments hadn’t been made public?  Because I don’t think he would be.  Plus, what about the sermons Wright has been giving for the last twenty years.  Obama didn’t decide to leave after all of that, but now suddenly when Rev. Wright is an issue he’s saying he would have left?

Please.  This is a rather transparent bit of CYA from a guy desperately trying to scramble away from an issue that’s a ticking bomb for his campaign.

By the way, if Rev. Wright hasn’t hurt Obama in the polls at all why does Obama keep talking about him?  If this isn’t an issue, as many in the media and on the left are now claiming, shouldn’t he have moved on by now?

I think he hasn’t because he knows that while the media and the wonky political types who pay attention to politics year ‘round have all had their fill of Wright there is still a vast swath of something-less-than-engaged voters out there who haven’t had their fill yet.  These voters aren’t likely to start getting engaged until the general election campaigns begin and we get a little closer to election day, but when they do start to engage they’ll be confronted with Wright in all his whitey-bashing glory and won’t like what they see.

Obama is still trying to get out in front of that, I think.