I turned on the news this morning only to see Jeremiah Wright giving a talk at the National Press Club, followed by a particularly fruity question and answer session. There is no question but that Wright is bright, quick on his feet, well-read, smarter than almost all his questioners, funny, capable of handling himself in a rough and tumble environment, and far enough to the left (from where I sit) to have disappeared over the horizon.
All of this has to be a Machiavellian scheme from someone of Karl Rove’s abilities. Jeremiah Wright is the gift (to the Republicans) that just keeps on giving. Measured in debating coach terms, Wright gave a good account of himself — that is certainly true — which simply means that he is going to be given access to more and more microphones as time goes by. His rationale is that he is just defending himself, and one sees how he would want to do that. And the better he is at it (and he is pretty good at it), the more these radical views will settle in on red state America, with the sentiments of jeepers, yikes, and crikey becoming increasingly common. By November, it will be as difficult to get Obama elected as it would be to do the same for Castro, Osama, or Michael Moore. The phrase out there comes to mind.
As I have argued before, Obama has the nomination, which we can tell by the fact that his adversaries are starting to deconstruct him now. If they had made their move too soon, it would have gotten Hillary the nomination, and they know she would have been the more formidible candidate.
But they now believe, correctly in my view, that the nomination is very unlikely to go to her, and so they have started in on Obama. This is not going to be pretty. Yesterday I saw a portion of an interview with a New York cop who had survived an explosion at police headquarters back in the seventies, courtesy of the Weather Underground, and Obama’s pal William Ayers. Just imagine if Timothy McVeigh had been bombing around back in the seventies, calmed down later, and was now serving on community service boards together with John McCain. How would that fly? About as well as this is going to, once we settle into the campaign.
And then, as a personal gift to me, as I tuned in, Wright was quoting the insufferable Jim Wallis with approbation—Wallis of course being the Wilberfarce of our generation.