I googled it and found this which indicates Obama may have used that language in the past. Hardly a major point regardless.
The most recent polls show some significant slippage in his support. Only 51 of Dems now expect Obama to win the nomination. Yikes! Maybe this is just a blip, but if carries over into the NC and IL primaries, I think we will have to pull that fork out of Hillary.
I really think the Clintonistas on the SDMB have just lost their minds.
Generally conspiracy theories do not work here well by virtue of the usual demands to back up your notions with something like facts or logical reasoning. Yet here we are with dubious ideas flying out at every turn.
It is possible that this was coldly calculated but we have zero evidence for or against that so all we can to is apply some common sense and logic.
[ul]
[li]To make this work Obama would first have to have a shockingly cold and calculating election strategy that would impress Karl Rove. However, we have no other evidence of Obama playing dirty on anything like that level.[/li]
[li]Their strategy would have to assume by setting Wright to go crazy for the national media would not backfire on them. By no means a certainty and a distinct gamble. A gamble made even more a stretch since Obama is currently winning. Such things could backfire and indeed there are many here on the SDMB (as well as many other places) doing their level best to portray it as something awful.[/li]
[li]Wright would have to be willing to make a mockery of himself for the cause. He does not strike me as someone who would do that. If indeed he did do that then he is a martyr who believes so passionately in seeing Obama be president he would be willing to cast a shadow over his life’s work. [/li]
[li]Usually when someone takes one for the political team they are promised some future goodies. An ambassadorship to Liechtenstein or a cushy job somewhere. However Obama was particularly harsh in his condemnation of Wright. In order for Obama to make good down the road he’d have to have some sort of rapprochement with Wright which is hard to imagine given how harshly Obama dealt with this not to mention how blatant obvious it would be to everyone what was going on.[/li]
[li]Obama has not gotten a huge positive bounce out of this. Seems to be playing for him with a net positive so far but nothing dramatic. Seems an awful lot of trouble for not much result. If his campaign is so coldly calculating to arrange a whole Wright confrontation one would think they would be smart enough to see to it that it netted them a huge benefit.[/li][/ul]
If you do not buy the above then consider that in the absence of evidence Occam’s Razor should apply. The above conspiracy theory is complex and asks us to swallow a lot of “possibles” to have happened.
More likely is Wright found himself in the spotlight and it went to his head burning himself with delusions of grandeur. That is an old story we have seen many times in many venues and certainly the simplest explanation to appease good old Occam.
That cite backs me up. There is one article which paraphrases Obama as saying he considers Wright to be a friend and mentor but does not quote him directly, and no other direct quote seems to exist either. This “mentor” thing is a media characterization, not something Obama has actually claimed.
Just thought that needed to be repeated in bold. It truly amazes me that there are so many people going around who think they are an expert on a man because they have seen some carefully-selected out-of-context clips from a few of his more controversial sermons over the years. Kind of adds more evidence to the notion (that now has some scientific support, as I understand it) that the more ignorant people are, the more that they think they know.
I fail to see how those polls are bad for Obama. The CBS poll give him an 8-point lead over Clinton, which is up from four weeks ago by that poll. It shows him tied with McCain and with better favorable/unfavorable than either McCain or Clinton.
The NBC poll also shows him beating Clinton by wider margins than in March, with more voters concerned about Clinton’s honesty than Bittergate, Wright, or Ayers.
Are the expectations of victory really more important than the relative levels of support for that victory?
To me that is a scary indication of the effect media has on the populace.
Note the poll was not about who they would vote for but who they think would win. What have we seen in the media lately but misleading stories of how Obama is in trouble when, in fact, the math indicates otherwise. HRC needs to pull of wins of 66% or better in every election from here on out to win the popular vote.
Of course there is something of self fulfillment in there and that is not encouraging for Obama.
TBH I can’t wait for the Democratic Primaries to be over. Be it HRC or Obama either should bury McCain. If, after 8 years of the absolute disaster that is Bush and a (for much of the time) Republican Congress, the Dems cannot get the White House they should just go out and shoot themselves.
But there’s not, not according to the poll at least. Both polls indicate Obama is gaining support, not losing it. I think John Mace just got snookered by bad wire reporting.
It is especially worth noting that the number of people with major concerns about McCain’s proximity to Bush is larger than the people with major concerns about any of the Obama or Clinton dustups. Indeed, more people think Wright is a non-issue than think it is a significant one. That is all a good sign for Obama, isn’t it?
I fail to see where you are getting your numbers. Can you provide a link?
The story I linked to had Obama down significantly across the board. Unless Clinton is down even more (which I think is mathematically impossible), then this is bad for Obama.
From the polls themselves [PDF warning]:
The article you linked did not indicate that Obama’s support was down, it indicated that the expectations of his victory are down (and, inexplicably, failed to report that his support was up).
This may be coming late in this thread, but yes, Lib, links *are *necessary. Searching with relevant terms on youtube gets you a whole messy pile of results, and I have so far been unable to find the relevant clip. And then, when I do, I won’t be sure it is the relevant clip, until I listen to the whole thing and then compare it with the overall content of this thread. So please, for consideration’s sake, link to the specific speech you’re referring to.
Thanks in advance.
ETA: Also, if this thread grows longer, and sticks around awhile, the relevant clips will no longer be the ones to rise to the top of the youtube search. So on that count as well, please link to the relevant clip, so that it can be “filed” with this thread, with no chance of confusion.
Hey, for the record, I’m an Obamaniac, not a Clintonista.
And I wasn’t really being serious. Or anyway, to be more precise, I do not take my own theories about this kind of thing seriously at all. No one else should either.
-FrL-
They didn’t vote for John Kerry either…
I can believe that Obama may have said it some time ago after he had begun to build a relationship with Christianity and that church in particular. Listening to Wright and the extended versions of the sermons I can understand that his message of social and personal responsibility could be inspirational. Mentors don’t always remain our mentors. They sometimes assist in a certain period of growth. Obama strikes me as smart enough and independent enough to take what he finds positive and not absorb the parts he doesn’t agree with.
I agree that there’s no recent direct quote from Obama that I have seen calling Wright a Mentor. As I said, it’s a very minor issue.
Guilt by association is a logical fallacy, not a logical argument.
From the New York Times:
Though his polling on expectations may be down, his raw numbers are not.
From what I’ve gathered, the consensus (which is by no means unanimous) is that Kerry lost primarily because he didn’t do enough to retaliate against baseless attacks like the Swiftboat stuff. Obama seems to be picking his battles, but he is retaliating when he believes he needs to, and as forcefully as he believes he needs to.
Since I suspect that 9thFloor is a Bushevik rather than a Clintonista, I am not going to slap this down as a personal attack, but you should probably avoid characterizing other posters disparagingly in GD .
[ /Modding ]
I don’t knowabout the NBC poll-- the article I linked to was about the CBS poll. The CBS shows Obama’s support among registered Democrats is down, and, more telling, it looks like support is slipping over to McCain. Obama now is even w/ McCain in the general, and Hillary beats him. 18% of registered Dems say they will vote for McCain over Obama vs 12% for McCain over Hillary.
Maybe this was just one poll, and it’s an outlier, but I guess we’ll see next week when the real poll takes place (ie, the NC and IN primaries).
I…I can’t tell if that was intentionally ironic or not, tom.