"Habeeb"?  Isn't that one of those scary Muslim names?  Not that we want to make him like a scary Muslim man....

Now, seriously -- is the idea that Obama is a Marxist any less paranoid than the idea that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus?

I agree with tnmats:  "Habeeb" sounds suspiciously Muslim.  Clearly he's part of a secret plot to destroy America.  

"I believe he's hiding his Marxism from the American people"

It's not that well hidden - his Marxism can be found alongside Saddam's WMD's, that meeting in Prague, balanced budges and the Laffer Curve.  In GOP alternate reality land.

I viewed the video at YouTube "Is Obama Wright? - Pastor Jeremiah Wright & Senator Barack"   www.youtube.com/watch

From my point of view, as a professional propagandists (I'm in the advertising business) the piece has two weaknesses.

1.  It uses a stuttering repeating device to push its point home.  Completely unnecessary.  It undermines its p.o.v. by trying to hard.

2.  It includes a Malcolm X clip where Malcolm uses the phrase "the chickens have come home to roost" in juxtaposition to the Rev Wright using the same phrase.  

Although not totally unfair, because the Rev Wright was using the phrase in a not entirely dissimilar context, it will seem to ordinary Americans, who always want to be fair minded, as an overreach.

If the maker recut the video to eliminate those excesses, this is a very damning piece.   As damaging as anything Michael Moore ever did.  And you don't have to pay $10 or invest two hours to see it.  It's as close as YouTube.

Obama's got a serious problem here.

Advice to Democrats and the Left.  The best generals look at their enemy dispassionately.  They never deride or discount the enemy's strengths and advantages.

On the contrary, the successful general looks with cold, clear eyes at every asset the enemy has and every liability he himself is trying to overcome.

You are all sitting here now trying to bat back a big problem with sneers.  Sneers make poor artillery.

If you are really on Obama's side;  if you really think he ought to be president;  than I'd advise you to look long and hard and the Rev Wright problem and look at it the way a normal American will. Not as a Leftist.  Not as a Liberal.  Not even as a Democrat.  

Put yourself in the shoes of the unaligned, the Independent, the regular working guy Democrat in Ohio or PA.  

Then see how you, as a non-sophisticate, non-Ivy League, non-upper West Sider would look at this entire thing.

If you have the discipline to go through that exercise, you may find your solution.

But right now, as evidenced by the conversation here and elsewhere, Obama supporters are in deep denial.    That is not the technique of victory.

Sorry, Chan, not in denial here.  It's was always going to be tough for Obama to get through this without his race coming up as an issue, just like Hillary's gender will become one.  Considering the fact that the GOP was able to turn Kerry's military service into a liability, all of this is expected.  What makes Obama different from Kerry and Clinton is he isn't whining about the attacks, he's using them to his advantage.  That sounds like a good quality in a president to me, among all the others.

you're probably right Chan - but I've said all along, the only way Obama wins is by being 100% himself.  

Once he starts dancing to the tune of his enemies, he's Hillary is a nice suit.  He's just like every other pol leaping around at the polls.

Those same regular Americans also know when someone is acting out of fear and they instantly lose respect for them.  Lick the boots of your enemies so you won't get kicked? They kick you harder.  Ask Hillary and her banckrupcy bill vote, her Iraq vote, her flag burning vote.  Des he really think she won any Republican votes? They only hate her more for it.

The only way he weathers this is by being himself and continuing to lead in his own way. It's OK if someone rejects that, but anything less and he, as a true leader, evaporates instantly.

People respect someone who stands their ground more than any other quality.

ChanRobt,

Although I've only recently begun posting, I've been lurking on these boards for a while. I always enjoy reading your posts. I even noted your absence yesterday. If you were posting, I missed it. During that absence, something seems to have happened, however. As your posts elsewhere make clear, you haven't disowned your enthusiastic response to Obama's speech, or thrown it under that proverbial bus, but you do seem to be distancing yourself from it a bit. Am I wrong? Or did you experience a change of heart?

I do worry that Wright could yet become Obama's albatross, and I recognize that the senator still has a lot of work to do to win over the demographic you describe as "normal Americans." True, most of my acquaintances are abnormal, but not all, and I've been surprised by how many of the normal ones are supporting Obama. An old Republican friend the other day told me he intends to cast his first Democratic vote for Obama, and several of my Republican in-laws also have defected. The only die-hard Hillary-supporters I know of are insular Manhattoes like myself. Whether or not Obama succeeds in the end, I'm not fretting too much this week about strategy because Obama proved himself to be just the sort of general you describe. As you yourself said, he turned a danger into an opportunity. Yes, he'll need to keep working that alchemy, and he'll need to seize those opportunities he creates, but he's demonstrated he can do it. Let's wait and see. Your post-speech post is worth quoting in full:

"Senator Obama this morning didn't just give a brilliant speech, he gave a watershed speech.

I think that it will be seen in retrospect that Reverend Wright's misguided words, which posed such danger for Obama, turned out to provide him with a profound opportunity.

The issues that Obama was able to lay out on the table so eloquently today were discussed with more intelligence and nuance and insight than I have ever seen in a political speech on the subject.

This was very valuable.  An opportunity for our nation.  

I think you will see words from the Senator's speech of 18 March 2008 quoted for many years to come."

Probably Lebanese Christian, like Philip Habib. Different spelling, same name in arabic, I'd guess.

It's going to get a lot worse for Obama.

If our party's leaders had any wisdom and guts, they'd cut these two sinking candidates adrift and nominate Gore.

anonevent writes, "...It's was always going to be tough for Obama to get through this without his race coming up as an issue..."

It's not race coming up as an issue, anonevent, it's Leftist culture.

Colin Powell, would never have had race as an issue in the way it has come up.  Because he would not have been involved in Democratic Party politics and felt it necessary to sit in a black Chicago Church of this particular sort where the good pastor would have fulminated as Rev Wright at least periodically did.

Obama's problems are much more the problems of the Left, of post '68 Liberalism, of post '68 Democratic Party politics.

There is too much in Left-think, elite-think, Ivy League academia think that is not merely critical of America's failings (which we all ought to be) but which seems to deride and despise America.

No Republican candidate's wife would ever have uttered a sentence like "This is the first time in my adult life that I have been proud of America."

The Left, and the Democratic Party, is so marinated in this kind of thinking that it doesn't see how alien it is to normal people who simply love their country in a straightforward, unambiguous way.

I'll repeat.  Obama is not suffering now from racism.  He is suffering because the culture of the Left harbors so much that is derisive of the country.  And accepts these thoughts so matter of factly, that the Left doesn't even understand that they are aberrant.

Nippers, I am not distancing myself from my opinion of Obama's speech.  I will say again, it was brilliant.  It was historic.  It will be quoted for years.  It was even a watershed speech.

But, what it wasn't was a "Checkers Speech".  Dumb-ass as Nixon's weep, self-pitying thing was, it served to put his problem to bed.

Superb intelligence is not enough to win anything.  It has to be attached to the right weapon and the right strategy.

Obamas moved forward the national conversation.  He did not say-- and I'm not sure there is anything he could have said-- that could explain away to the satisfaction of critical voters, his sitting through Wright's fulminations for 20 years.

As someone has said, Wright may have been like an uncle.  But, he wasn't his uncle.  He was his political godfather, in the context of Chicago politics.

anonevent writes,  "Considering the fact that the GOP was able to turn Kerry's military service into a liability, all of this is expected.

The GOP didn't turn his service into a liability.  They turned what he did immediately after his service into one.  The Swift Boaters despised Kerry's accusing his fellows of atrocities.

Would you not resent such a person and such actions?

What happened to John Kerry, anonevent, was-- to use the phrase of Reverend Wright-- "the chickens coming home to roost".

Wandrey writes, "...People respect someone who stands their ground more than any other quality."

Excellent point, Wandrey.  Which explains why McCain is holding up fine in the polls.  Even though, supposedly, 60 or 70% of the country is against the Iraq war.  (Which I don't actually believe.  Or if they are, they aren't passionately so, just passively.)

Well Tep, you also predicted that immigration wouldd be the number 1 issue and that Rudy would be a formidable candidate.

I agree with Mr Chan that Obama's problem is not primarily about race but about the perception that Obama is really aligned with the left wing of the Democratic Party and is not as moderate as he portrays himself. After all, he was a disciple of Saul Alinsky. This fact has yet to be exploited to his disadvantage,

Furthermore, while his talk is all about his stalwart support for Israel, his actions tell a different story, as his advisors and spiritual leader are extremely hostile. As a result, there will be mass defections of Jews to McCain in nominally blue states, NY, CA, NJ, FL, and forget about industrial states OH, MI, PA etc. Maybe he will carry IL.

As Mr. Teplukhin states, the Democrats would be best off by nominating someone other than the two front runners. He likes Gore. I think Biden would be better.

I think that the press ran away with the historic nature of having both a woman and a black in contention and made it difficult for the white male candidates, even Edwards, to make their case.

r-eenis, you write, "...and forget about industrial states OH, MI, PA etc. Maybe he will carry IL."

I agreed.  But, take it further.  Sure he carried rural state Democrats in the primaries.  But there's zero reason to expect he would take any of those states, which almost always go Republican, in the national.  

Certainly he's not going to carry the South, even if he gets every last black vote.  Which always go to the Dems anyway.  Possible exception-- Virginia.  But, even that, I doubt.

reenis also said, "I think that the press ran away with the historic nature of having both a woman and a black in contention."  

Boy, is that an understatement.  This has been the most absurd exercise in harebrained tokenism imaginable.  And, for the presidency of the United States, for god sakes.  The media thought this was high school president they were running for.

John Kerry, the other day, made the gushed in the most soft-headed way (no surprise) about how marvelous it would be and how much the world would love us for electing a black man.  Is that what this is about--impressing certain foreign countries with our open-mindedness? For the record, Obama is only half black.  He's also half white.  Which is what makes this even more absurd.