you say rove/bush tactics but this is stinsinberger/deukmajian tactics from 30 years back. It was completely predictable. I knew this was coming. I believe it is to our advantage that it is happening now and not two or three weeks before the general election. For those of us who support Obama we should push back hard now and hopefully blunt that attack when it shows up in September.

What is so amazing about this election is that I believe we have moved beyond the politics that sank Bradly and that,as trite as it may sound, move to the future.

One really depressing thing is that every single mainstream pundit, including most of the blogosphere, seems more than willing to concur in solemn tones how serious this is for Obama and how he must address the issue. When, of course, this is completely irrelevant to Obama's fitness as president and has all the hallmarks of a Fox News-led Swiftboating that the rest of the media decides is one of those "telling" stories that lets us see into the soul of the candidate.

The other really depressing thing is the fact that the vast majority of Hillary supporters seem to be flogging this issue with thinly disguised glee. Although the vitriol between Obama and Hillary supporters is very strong most of the time, I thought we all would stop short of ruining the other candidates' chances against the true enemy, the Republicans. Hillary and her supporters are trying to prove me wrong.

And, as Todd suggests, if Hillary's supporters really think they are somehow immune from these types of attacks in the general, they are sadly mistaken.

Like her or dislike her everyone thinks they know the Hil -- 1992-2008. Her '60s persona will be seen as a juvenile supporting role on a flickering kinescope long since archived.

But Obama? Who knows who he is?

Everybody thinks they know what the proper response to 9/11 was and Rev. Wright's wasn't it. Obama had the opportunity to throw the good Reverend under the bus. He didn't. Stick a fork in him; he's done.

I largely agree but for your statement that "the vast majority of people have formed a view of Rev Wright based on a handful of short, grainy youtube clips." I'm told that a recent poll finds 42% of Americans unaware of the Rev. Wright--unaware, period. These folks might prove vulnerable to endless replays of the videos; or might get sick and tired of the people who keep playing them; or both. We don't know. We won't know.

Who did not understand that a black candidate would have to wade through this swamp?

This is simple: a candidate uses whatever tools that come to hand to win. If a black candidate threatens a white candidate, the obvious tool is "he's black". It's like reaching for a hammer to hit a nail - it's the most efficient way to get the job done. Basic mechanics really.

If it works, it's an indictment of the voting public. Someday it won't work anymore. Hard to say when that will be.

Sorry, my mistake - my intention was to say that the vast majority of people debating this issue had formed their view this way.

Certainly the GOP consultants quoted in that Politico article leave little doubt in this regard.

The matter of Jim Wright raises a series of exactly the same underlying questions for virtually all mainstream liberal/Democratic observers and pundits.

(1) The question of whether it OUGHT to be considered an important factor influencing people's votes, only SOME RWers, shameless ones like Ed Koch as well as others, truly argue that voters OUGHT to consider the gaffes NOT of the candidate or even a surrogate spokesperson for the campaign, but of Obama's pastor, a major factor in their vote. Unfortunately, there has been a broadening definition of what is considered a fatal gaffe -- from Romney and "brainwashed" (which also self-evidently was irrelevant in 68, though no less decisive for it), to the gaffes of McGovern, the more subtly perceived gaffes of Dukakis, or projected (as in the Willie Horton ads). For some figures, some miraculous invisible force makes nothing stick, although Clinton certainly had a close call in Monicagate -- coming out in the end with teflon intact.

One thing about virtually ALL these instances, as well as the Swiftboating campaign cooked up against Kerry -- is that NONE of them really provide any genuinely cogent reason why ANYONE should vote against someone, whether in the PROJECTION implicit in the Dean 'scream' (also something like Wright that can be replayed endlessly, creating its own cogency momentum); one difference is that increasingly at least this year, comments of third parties (Andrew Cuomo, Geraldine Ferraro, Rev Wright (and an attempt to use Farrakhan that Obama torpedoed easily).

The moral of the story is that the ACTUAL merits and logic of these issues make little difference -- it is difficult to frame any kind of consistent analytical system that winnows out, in advance, what should -- or even WILL -- prove decisive. The role of media is key -- but it is not as if any in the media make a conscious or unconscious choice; the medium is often as much the message as the reporter, as with the 'culprit'.

The second inevitable question always becomes -- in these situations -- what effect WILL this have on voters, and, only obliquely and occasionally, what should be done about it. To avoid going on endlessly in one comment, let me just say that the only REALLY serious issue that should be addressed is the 'what is to be done' question, incorporating Obama's speech (a valiant and truly, and not superficially, excellent response), into the strategic mix.

Without going on much more in THIS comment on the question of whether the Wright issue will prove an enormous factor more than a month from now, possibly decisive in either the nomination or the GE, as many have been suggesting -- what progressives need to do is to develop a strategy of response that is coherent and effective, starting with of course the hidden-in-plain sight obvious points made here at first about the lack of intrinsic merit to the issue, but without the kind of simplifying dynamic that fails to see where this has legs that, say, Swiftboating did not, and THEN going on the kind of ideological offense that conservatives have mastered.

I am a young black woman Obama supporter and I too am unsure if Obama can win the nomination or the general in light of the way the Wright story has been, and undoubtedly will continue to be, flogged.

I actually don't think Obama has anything to answer for. Anyone who's spent any time in an activist black church knows that the elders just talk like that sometimes. For them, all the government sanctioned violence against people of color is not ancient history, it was the reality of their formative years and early adulthood. The younger generations don't run out *gasp* astonished (!) with offense every time they say something kooky because we owe our ability to roll our eyes and walk into a more integrated world in which our life chances are better, to them and their struggle. We know, as Obama said, that their mistake is that they don't fully believe that their struggle took firm hold and that the world has changed a bit.

There's a lot to learn from the old radicals about how commitment to the cause of justice and faith that what you speak and do can make a difference and actually improve the lives of the people around you. You don't walk away from that knowledge just because one of the elders buys an HIV/AIDS conspiracy theory. So what. They lived through Tuskegee, and like many other cultures that have faced systematic oppression, they warn the young people that bad things could happen again unless they remain vigilant citizens. Simple as that.

But these honest interpretations are all quite irrelevant, because what this *gasp* outrage (!) is really about is being suspicious that Obama is actually an archetypal *angry black man* and that he's only trying to fool you with his high-minded rhetoric about overcoming the past and making a way forward together.

*Sigh*

You know what my 84 year old grandmother said to me when this story broke -- "I told you so." And she did.

With this completely nonsensical flap over things Obama didn't say and doesn't believe (read his books) our hopes -- hopes that are not primarily about having a black president, but about having a new and more pragmatic politics, less blemished by the sorts of experiences and dispositions that crowd the elder pews -- may be dashed.

I have to say that if this is the reason that Obama loses the nomination or the Democrat loses the White House, I will not only feel more alienated from politics than I ever have, but also more hopeless about America's ability to make a way forward and adapt to the changing circumstances and demands of the 21st century world. We cannot afford to be wedded to old fights and hunker down in old postures anymore. And yet, here we are.

The more things change... you know the rest. My elders might be right after all. And here's the thing, as a 28 year old black woman, despite everything I know about history, everything I've been warned to expect, I'm actually really surprised. So here we are, stubbornly laying the groundwork for a newly embittered generation and willfully locked in an ugly and antiquated politics.

I applaud Obama’s outstanding speech that cut to the heart of race divisions. I think if Obama had made this speech at another time without the ham-fisted political motivation framing it, it might have propelled him into the WH instead of just keeping him in the Dem race. As much as he may aspire to transcendence, when all's said and done, this was a campaign speech attempting damage control. Is this a cynical view? Yes, but our politics have been cynical for some time and politicians are only trusted slightly more than journalists, lawyers, and frauds. Of course, people make rash uninformed judgments following the media spin (where else would they get their info) and the CW water cooler consensus. But if the underpinning of the speech was not an apologia for association with a radical racial ideology (even if only of his pastor and his past), his thesis of moving beyond and understanding roots of race divisions on all sides would not be undercut by an attempt to isolate and excuse the political problem of Wright’s video clips. Can one be blamed for feeling that he was speaking sincerely, but at the same time, exploiting the race issue to cover his political problem?

Unfortunately we have allowed our politics to descend into horserace/spin/smear/spin/leak/attack cycle of musical chairs that ends suddenly on a November Tuesday (and then we wake up to find an undeniable idiot is running the country into the ditch). Was it inevitable that Obama’s campaign was always going to be defined by race? I feel he has played race politics himself. In the political part of his speech, he gently pointed to the media and the Clinton campaign as playing on race divisions and beseeched us to renounce all of the race politics, including Wright. And you can’t argue with that. Still, his campaign has benefited (if not backed) race politics against his opponents and ran as a black candidate to some constituencies while decrying his being labeled a black candidate, but now that he has been seriously wounded is reaching for race to transcend a tawdry political dilemma. I believe that Obama’s call for understanding of different people’s perspectives does not bode well for putting the Wright issue behind him. Obama’s message is unity while Wright’s is separatism. His speech was enlightening in many respects but what is audacious is to think most people fall into those stereotypes exemplified or that most people will change their thinking because of an eloquent speech by a political candidate.

Of course, there is a whole spectrum of fixed beliefs and prejudices and misinformed opinion. I believe, just from my own myopic observations, that most of the muddled middle of America, black, brown or white, will not see Wright’s beliefs and shock sermons as benign ‘come-to-Jesus’ preaching or black pride community activism. Maybe there are still charged associations from the ‘60s between preaching black power and black empowerment. But the reduction of white people’s reaction to Wright as “fear of the angry black man” is a stereotype just as the “angry black man” itself is a stereotype. Of course, Right extremists will appeal to it, but that doesn’t mean most people see it like that. I can't imagine any average Joe fearing Barack Obama, of all people, as an "angry black man." But what many understandably see as anti-American racially-loaded remarks and an extremist underlying political philosophy in Wright and Trinity cannot be whitewashed as just activist fire and brimstone preaching. More to the political point, Obama’s choice of this church and his continued association with Reverend Wright (running his AA Religious Leadership Committee) is seen not as loyalty to community or just standing by a friend or loud old-school uncle regardless of his beliefs but as tolerance and silent accordance with those beliefs.

Will Obama’s honest rhetoric on race bring people together to some degree? I think it will, it may get people talking and that is good. But in terms of this endless job interview to run America, is race the most salient and pressing issue that we face? Of course, the legacy of discrimination has a great deal to do with many of our continuing problems like poverty, health care, education, etc. Obama also exhorts us to move beyond the race divide but in making it an issue, it may be a distraction from those problems on a practical and political level. Bill Clinton even tried to reframe the issues in terms of class rather than race to get movement on the problems. Issues can be seen through the race prism instead of the American prism and race will be a cloud over this country. We must continue to evolve out of our prejudices. But there is no legislation that a president can pass that will force unity. Obama’s central message is an old one- programs that lift people out of poverty and assure that families and communities thrive work towards racial harmony. But most voters will decide on policies and positions (and personality, if not whim) not who can bring people together. (Just one old white guy’s $.02)

I knew this was coming. syvanen

We all have to have known that this was coming. hookstrapped

Well, before he arrived I didn't know the Reverend Wright was coming anymore than I knew Ward Churchill was coming before he arrived.

Ellen wrote

Like her or dislike her everyone thinks they know the Hil -- 1992-2008. Her '60s persona will be seen as a juvenile supporting role on a flickering kinescope long since archived

And I agree with her conclusion to a point. Yet Kerry's swiftboating was also ancient history but nevertheless successfully brought to life by clever ads.
What protects Hillary from a similar fate is that her Alinsky thesis was not a total endorsement of Alinsky's goals.
Alinsky wanted to empower the powerless. She wants to do the same. Both agree that empowering the powerless cannot be a radical process because historically the powerless would rather remain powerless than take a leap into totally alien territory. So both are in this respect incrementalists, like myself.

Where Hillary disagreed with Alinsky is that she was (is) perfectly happy to work within the democratic structure and not aim for some eventual overthrow of it while Alinsky saw democracy as a friendly system from which to work towards a better system.

They both are communitarians of sorts (It takes a village), but she sees no problem in the concept of a communitarian democracy.

So no, Hillary was not an Alinsky radical even back then, she was just a student who saw the virtue of empowering common people in order to better their lives.

BTW Obama took a page from Olinsky too when he did community organizing in Chicago.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Oh, you're a clever one, Mr. jollyroger.