Due to Rev. Wright's inflamatory sermons on race, class, and gender making their way to the fore, national attention is now focussed directly on Barack Obama to explain. The press is saying it's "do or die", but this has actually given him a fantastic opportunity. The general election campaign hasn't even begun, but he will deliver a speech to very wide audience spelling out his vision. For a few minutes, he gets exactly what he needs - no reporters, no pundits, no surrogates, just him and his words.

Needless to say, Obama's unifying ideas and his ability to communicate them directly to people is why he has a movement to begin with. He can truly cement himself as the nominee with this. This is his New Hampshire moment, and Hillary Clinton's worst nightmare.

Obama welcomes a big scandal because it lets him make a big speech?

I'm not saying Obama welcomes it. I am saying it's what he needs - to get past the talking heads in the media and the campaigns that inject themselves as the story - so he can speak directly to the voters. Like many times before, he's going to turn a negative situation into a positive opportunity. That's exactly why he'll make a great President.

Spinning bad press is a prerequisite of any "good" politician.

Spoken like a true talking head.

You know, the more of this claptrap I read from the Obama camp, the more convinced I become that someday soon he's going to be the next L. Ron Hubbard. It's like Scientology, but political. No matter how stupid something is, no matter how negative, just get on the internet and say it's a great thing! I appreciate that he has an articulate and motivated staff that really want to get the word out and most of their posts are respectful. So did Heaven's Gate. Frankly, that whole camp is really giving me a Jim Jones heebie jeebie. (I know, I mixed my cult metaphors, but you get the picture)

Before you start bashing, I'm a liberal and none too fond of H. Clinton. The Obamacons are just creeping me out.

Obama and his major-media apologists describe the Rev. Wright's comments as you do, contextually, as "inflammatory" or "controversial", so as to signifying a problem in degree, not kind. Analagous comments from a white candidate's mentor would immediately be considered beyond the pale, "racist", and "hate-filled". "Inflammatory" itself is particularly instructive because it indicates a general agreement with the sentiments, or at least their auspices---it's just that put that way the comments "go too far" because they cause pain or irritation. Michelle Obama's own bad-America comments indicate that the sentiments of Rev. Wright are indeed right on the merits.

In this connection, Obama's own reference to his minister's comments as "stupid" may mean "stupid because they harm his campaign" by openly describing a worldview he'd rather keep to himself for now. Look for Obama to pay lip-service to color-blindness even as he promises behind closed doors a massive slavery reparations bill once he's elected. Obama is not a "stealth Muslim", but a stealth post-Marxist race 'n class warrior, in which he the Rev. Wright find common cause with Farrakhan, Jackson, Sharpton, Ogletree, and the other prominent race-resentment vendors, as well as the United Nations and other globalists, all of whom share as a fundamental precept that Judeo-Christianity and capitalism ('specially those Joos) are pernicious and pathological cultural forces, with the United States the most prominent example.

Obama's plans were to divide the DNC all along.

Twenty plus years of listening to his pastor has lead him to DNC party destruction. He should've left the church and kept the pastor as a close friend. Lack of judgement lead him to this defining moment.

But I still hope he can come back in 8 years, after Hillary gets elected. He will be President, but not now.

Heaven's Gate? Scientology? There's no suicide cult or space aliens here. Just people interested in overcoming divisions and solving problems. :)

Inkberrow, Obama's own main campaign message from the start has been a rejection of the very ideas the Rev. Wright espoused in those sermons. He has also unequivocally rejected and denounced those Wright's words. That does in fact signify a problem of kind, not degree. What more do you want? Should he demand a duel?

PDC:

Obama's plans were to divide the DNC all along.

Twenty plus years of listening to his pastor has lead him to DNC party destruction. He should've left the church and kept the pastor as a close friend. Lack of judgement lead him to this defining moment.

But I still hope he can come back in 8 years, after Hillary gets elected. He will be President, but not now.

Wow. That's just paranoid. You are aware that Hillary Clinton has some skeletons of her own? And I hate to break it to you, but she is losing...

concerned that it's a rhetorical strategy and not fully reflective of his own worldview. He can "denounce" post hoc all he wants, just as he, Clinton, or McCain can noisily return the portions of their illicitly or questinably donated campaign funds which happen to have been revealed as such. His long-time mentor and self-reported inspiration is, and has always been, a purveyor of that brand of social gospel which battens on race and class resentment, which denominates the sheep and the goats in identity-politics terms. Obama's implicit claim to have never heard nor have had any idea of the Rev. Wright's virulent racialism and long-time friendsip with Minister Farrakhan is not credible---if he's a thinking, engaged individual. Either way, it's a problem.

It's long been true, from Barry Goldwater to Howard Dean, that candidates honest enough to openly stand on party orthodoxy will be defeated because they are perceived as "divisive". That "divisive" is deemed a pejorative on its face in a two-party, conservative v. progressive contest of worldviews, is itself testament to the banal, appearance-over-substance bowdlerization of "issues" that dominates our current politics. I admit what Obama's doing is smart from a realpolitik point of view, and he's just as much right to do and say what's necessary to be elected as any other student of Machiavelli. Shoot, I proudly voted for Pat Buchanan.

Did you watch it? There is no calculation in that man, and nothing at all banal That was a real president talking. How easily W made me forget...

I suggest you look in the mirror when calling others talking heads, wayhey1. You are entitled to your opinions, but name calling really makes your point seen shallow and shortsighted. Why would anyone proceed to try to understand your position on the issue when you behave in that way?