Since so many Obama supporters seem bound and determined to continue talking about Rev. Wright, perhaps because of some imagined orchestrations between Sen Clinton's campaign and certain segments of the media or due to the mischaracterizations by talking heads of what Greg Sargent had to report: I'm going to revisit the issue with my second post on the subject and I'm going to expand upon one of my comments to DF's enlightened post, Tuesday night.

1) As Josh noted on Wednesday, it isn't clear from Greg's interview with Harold Ickes, whether it's the Clinton campaign or some superdelegates who are broaching the subject in their discussions.

I'm going to take the position that I'm sure both campaigns have had to address the issue. I'm sure some superdelegates have asked the Obama people, how they're going to handle it in the fall or maybe the campaign is having to reassure some fence-sitters that it's a non-issue. And, I'm equally sure that the topic of Hillary's negatives, Ken Starr's investigations and the possibility of winning back the Obama voters are also coming-up in some conversations between superdelegates and both campaigns.

It's the job of a superdelegate to consider all of these factors and though there are some who might be making up their minds on the issues and those who have an idea of which way they may go, there's also some who would naturally want to consider the politics of the game.

2) The topic is almost a hundred percent guaranteed to be raised again.

I don't listen to talk radio, but I wouldn't be surprised if some bloviating blowhards don't already have snippets or isolated phrases carded for bumpers or to use as punctuation. I'm also pretty certain that if Don Imus was still a factor, he'd have his impersonator recording comedy bits, much as "Al Sharpton" and "Cardinal O'Connor" had regular segments on his show.

The sermon snippets that we've already heard from the Reverend seem well-suited for a drive-by commercial, but I'd expect them not to start playing until late in the fall, if ever and then only in targeted markets or on specialized cable stations.

More toward the beginning, my money would be on a 527 quietly sending mailers to targeted addresses in sort of a geographic swath from Tallahassee (FL) to Lake Charles (LA), basically following the I-10 corridor and I'd expect pockets to be sent toward south-central Tennessee, spilling-over into northern Georgia and Alabama and maybe even into central Pennsylvania, along with parts of Ohio and the Michigan upper peninsula.

3) In response to DF's post, womanofacertainage pointed out that if such a campaign were to come to light, Sen. McCain would publicly "reject and denounce it".

I don't doubt that this is true, but such a pronouncement from the McCain campaign would probably help their candidate with independent voters. After all, a 527 is forbidden by law from coordinating their actions with the official campaign and they can not take direction from it. They could bend to the candidate's wishes, if they choose, but at its heart, the movement using Rev. Wright as a wedge wouldn't be so much pro-McCain, rather it'd be more of an anti-Obama. Sen. McCain could disavow it until the cows come home, the independents would think that he's a good guy and it'd help temper some of the voter motivation that would result, if this racist tactic becomes known.

4) As for the more national aspects of the Rev. Wright issue, I wouldn't expect a lot until October and then it'll mostly be noisy talking heads who'll be employing the clips as part of the "national conversation on race" or as a way to call Sen. Obama's judgment into question.

The repetition of the clips are going to have an effect on certain elements of the electorate, but they're most likely not going to vote for a Democrat in the first place. To me, the larger issue of "judgment" appears to be the most damaging, especially since it'll come on the heels of an extended argument over policy and lots of references to Vietnam.

In a nutshell, reportedly the Senator and the Reverend had conversations about the need for some distancing; In response to other posts, I've linked to a fifteen month-old wire story which painted the Reverend as a radical and about a year ago, "Tucker" did his second show on the subject. Among my reasons for providing these links were to say that Sen. Obama has had plenty of time to prepare for the inevitable questions and he's darn lucky (or one hell of a tactician), the story didn't break before Super Tuesday or much earlier in the campaign.

There will be times as President that he's going to have to play one group against another or distance himself from someone or something for political gain. The same will be true in diplomacy: there are some things that we can do or say about Taiwan and other things that we can not. How Obama plays the issue of his friend and how he explains his thinking can lessen the impact of the damage and though his supporters may be loathe to admit it, but I feel that he may have gotten an inadvertent assist from Sen. Clinton, when she explained her response to the question from Richard Mellon Scaife.

DF was right with the crux of his Tuesday night post and because the issue will not be going away: if Obama is to become the nominee, as Democrats, we should not only lay the groundwork, but we should also be prepared.