Obama had claimed that he hadn’t been aware of the most incendiary sermons. This has been all over the tube. But now his language can be parsed to mean whatever you want it to mean at the moment. Whataya know: A Clintonesque Obama. The dream ticket in just one candidate. 
You’re honestly saying the Reverend Wright is comparable in anyway to David Duke? I’m sorry, but that it is totally ridiculous.
Do you think he’s worse?
See my response to CJJ.*
He certainly regained possession of the ball and managed to take charge of defining the terms of the debate.
Indeed. By again staking claim to the high ground, he forced his opponents to do the same or look petty (or worse, like old politics) by comparison.
I’m not going to wax poetic about the speech or compare him to MLK. I think the Kennedy speech mentioned back thread is more accurate a comparison. At any rate, this was exactly what he needed to do. However you feel about the speech, the topic of discourse has changed. He’s managed to shift it from how much he knew to how well he handled it.
Obama said Wright had never spoken that way in his presence (either public or private). He said he WAS aware that Wright had made incindiary statements outside of his presence and said today that he had heard other controversial remarks from the pew, but just not the ones that Fox News is playing on an endless porno loop trying to whip up white paranoia.
I think you would have more credibility if 90% of your own posts here did not consist of inflammatory, anti-Muslim scare-mongering.
I think the only people who will be unmoved by this speech today are people who never would have voted for a Democrat anyway. That speech was a marvel of nuance, honesty, even-handedness, decency and – yes – hope. It wasn’t just “pretty words.” It actually had meaningful content. We rarely ever politicians say anything with content anymore.
I think it’s notable that weren’t really any catchphrases or quotable lines. What was interesting and memorable about it wasn’t the style but the substance. He actually said something and what he said was true.
David Duke is a racist. What did Wright say that was racist?
Nothing in today’s speech contradicts (or even addresses) his previous denials. He said earlier that he hadn’t witnessed certain statements, then said today that he has witnessed Wright make controversial statements that he disagreed with. Unless you have any reason to believe that such a claim necessarily includes the specific statements in question, I don’t see any contradiction.
He obviously chose today not to focus on any specific statements that Wright made, and where he himself may have been at the time. He has responded to various statements that has been asked about when asked, and has been consistent in rejecting, and claiming not to have actually heard them at the time. Today he spoke about Rev. Wright in broader terms. The speech would have been ridiculous if he changed subject to address specific claims from his critics again.
Wow. Your desperation is showing. A simple “Oh, I see, you’re right” would have been more appropriate. And why in the world did you even bring up Muslims? Surely you must have been able to see from the posts in this thread that Islam has nothing to do with it. It was a Christian church, was it not? Obama is a Christian, is he not. Ooohh, I see, after you made a mistake challenging what I wrote you wanted to deflect attention away from that and grossly (understatement) misrepresent my posting history with something that is wrong in both fact and degree in some type of ad hominem attack. What would Obama say about such behavior ?Isn’t time for another kind of poster, those who wouldn’t stoop resort to such distortions and tactics?
And you might have missed the part where I said it was an excellent speech. Not that it matters…
But you WEREN’T right, were you? A simple “Oh, I was wrong,” would be appropriate here. And I’m not desperate. I’m on the side that’s winning for once.
To highlight your lack of moral credibility in feigning any dismay about perceived racial division.
Um…no…I CORRECTED a mistatement that you made. You should now apologhize for your mistake and move on.
Wait a minute. I thought Barack Obama was a Muslim. So how is it that he has been a member of a Christian church for the past 20 years? Colored me confused. I better tune in Fox News so that they can explain this apparent inconsistency to me.
If anything, this Wright mess may just be a boon for Obama, in that it directly contradicts the “secret Muslim” thing.
Bzzzt. Wrong.
I’m an atheist. I’m not seeking “protection under the umbrella of religion”. I’m questioning the relevance of Obama’s church/pastor/religion to anything that actually matters.
It’s a mountain made out of a molehill, a distraction from issues that are actually fucking relevant. And it’s a depressingly common distraction, dragged out again and again by Republican blowhards. Kennedy couldn’t be trusted! He didn’t belong to the mainstream church! Why, he’d put the U.S. of A. under the command of the Pope! Watch out for Romney! Can we let a…gasp…Mormon lead the Republican Party? And now Obama. Any excuse to paint him as someone who doesn’t rub the correct brand of blue mud into his belly-button. Any excuse to paint him as the “other”, to distract the public from the question of how he would run the country as President, a question that’s so far removed from the nature of his Pastor’s sermons that it’s over the horizon.
Obama’s speech is honest and genuine. It is provocative and powerful but not judgmental. Obama manages to eloquently articulate the humanity in the complex American experience without apology or blame. I can’t imagine anyone not stirred by this speech, if it can be described as a speech. It seems more reminiscent of a talk or lecture. Obama is intelligent, sophisticated, American, and amazingly human.
If Obama’s association with the Reverend Wright costs him the nomination, it will be the result of hypocrisy and ignorance fostered by a weak and disgraceful mass media that thrive on hysteria and junk news for ratings.
Actually I was. You said I hadn’t read the speech and I had. You then said that I claimed that Obama said something he didn’t. I thought my subsequent answer covered that. If not, I’ll have to ask you to do what you should have done from the start: identify the specific claim that troubled you.
Wow again. That’s a mighty long, sloppy, rickety bridge you’re building there. In fact I’m not even sure it is a bridge. Please rephrase if you’d like it addressed.
I have no idea to what you’re referring to here.
Don’t you think that the beliefs of a person who a candidate choses to look to as a mentor over 20 years deserve to be looked at? If not, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Dude, I didn’t appreciate the snarkiness. I mean, the gall that I have a different opinion about Obama than you… surely the only explanation is that I’m not paying attention to what’s going on around me, right?
Obama’s candidacy in a nutshell is way premature, IMO. I think I would support him in '12 or '16. Look at the difficulty he’s had attracting the Latino vote. Why is Hillary beating him so handily here? Because she’s invested the time in getting to know members and leaders in the community. If Obama went to the Senate, invested the time in developing relationships, he would be formidable. Why would a public servant elect not to do the prudent thing in developing relationships over time?
Patrick was a different entity altogether. The Mass governorship is legendarily the domain of non-politicians. Running as a Democrat in a Democrat-controlled state with a Democrat legislature, his work as an attorney for the Office of Civil Rights and his business experiences translated well in a job where recruiting business for the state was a priority. And Kerry Healey was a weak, mean-spirited candidate, the heir to a governorship that Mitt Romney basically used as a springboard for his presidential run.
Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out that well for Patrick to date. But I think he can probably turn it around. I wasn’t close enough in the campaign to meet Deval, though many close friends were closely connected. I just found out that one of my professors was appointed to be the state secretary of education.
It is a PR silver lining for Obama aint it? It’ll make a lot of those Islamophobics aware that he is a church going man.
The fierce urgency of now.