It comes as a surprise to you that there is a lot of anger in the black community, at every socioeconomic level?  What rock have you been living under?  The anger is more than justified.  Frankly, given the many indignities still suffered by the black community -- such as having a desiccated old hag and criminal like Geraldine Ferraro opine that you wouldn't have gotten where you are if you weren't black -- it is a wonder that the black community is so civilized towards the rest of us.

Apart from his enormous abilities and political gifts, a big part of the excitement of Obama's campaign is the hope that it offers that this country can finally move beyond that anger and manage to recognize itself as a shared community.  That Wright is angry presents a clear opportunity for Obama to show us again the way forward.  Not to deny that anger, but to acknowledge it, recognize that it is legitimate, and ask all of us to let it go for the sake of our common future.  I hope Obama rises to the opportunity and leaves the race-baiting Hillary Clinton to the obscurity she has so well earned and, as they say, richly (no pun there) deserves.

While the Wright comments plainly are a serious cause of concern, I think it's way too early to treat them as the fatal blow that Michael is suggesting they are.  As Noam pointed out earlier today, there might be an opportunity here for Obama to fully address issues of faith and race in a formal speech --and no, not one as lame as Romney's.  Obama gave a hint of what the theme of such a speech might be today.  He spent about a minute and a half of his remarks at a town hall meeting in Indiana invoking RFK's speech in Indianopolis on the day MLK, Jr. was assassinated, and saying that forces of division have come from all quarters, including those of his own former pastor.  He added that one of the key purposes of his campaign was to get past that way of thinking.  

It will indeed be tricky, but I do think Obama has the skill and understanding to pivot off of this controversy and to even use Wright as a foil in order to sharpen, by the use of contrast, the impression of Obama as a post-racial healer that Michael acknowledges Obama had successfully created prior to all this ugliness.  

I dunno.  I'm outside the U.S. and so have no feel for how this is all playing in the media Stateside, but my sense is that while it might shave a few votes off Obama in the primary, it's not going to be a big enough ding to drive 3/4 of the superdelegates into Clinton's camp--i.e. Obama will be the Democratic nominee--and I reckon by the time the general election campaign gets fired up this will all have blown over.  

As for the content of Wright's thought, are you guys really so shocked and surprised?  You ARE pretty whitebread, aren't you?  I grew up in a town and school system that was half black, and on occasion my liberal-lefty, Unitarian parents socialized with middle class black people.  There have been several occasions when I have been caught up short when an apparently normal, sane, educated, and intelligent black person voiced what seemed to me to be a completely nutso, paranoid belief about life and race in the USA.  On such occasions, I never felt inclined to blast my interlocutor, to 'reject and denounce' him or her.  You just take it on board, acknowledge that one's own experiences as a white person are not the same as the person with whom you're speaking, and move on.

I was once speaking about this phenomenon--actually we were talking about the OJ Simpson verdict--with a highly educated, white former resident of Chicago and Los Angeles.  We each agreed that we had observed wide-spread feelings of paranoia in the black community.  But my companion shocked me when he said he thought these paranoid beliefs were probably justified.  It's worth knowing this man's background; he was Jewish and a survivor of Auschwitz.

The danger is not so much that Obama can't do exactly that -- to use Wright as a foil to sharpen his own message -- but that it still screws up the steady campaign gains in Penn.  There, Wright's attitude will totally play into the resentment history (busing, affirmative action etc) of the white working class.  The old post-1968 conspiracy theory of a black radical/white liberal elite axis aimed at messing up the world of the average white guy (and woman) will only get more intense play now.  Wright is an effing menace!  I wish there were some way of putting him right now on the same communication-disadvantaged cruise ship as Ferraro, they kind of suit each other.

Irony,

You are right, there is great danger, and it is to Hillary's everlasting shame that she is playing the George Wallace role in this campaign.  But there is opportunity.  Obama needs to "pivot" of this, as it were, and grab the media's attention for his message that he not only rejects the particulars of Wright's speeches, but rejects that entire politics of pitting one group against another as if America is too small for all of us.  "That's the Republican's game, stoking race hatred, pitting working class whites against working class blacks.  It's not just that we won't play that game, it is that we are going to beat it once and for all.

Michael is normally a very astute commentator, so I wonder if I am missing something here. But how do the pretty non-controversial views about the war in Iraq, expressed in the link, relate at all to how widespread the reverend's anti-american rhetoric was? This doesn't make any sense to me. Someone help me out.

I am shocked. Shocked!

Please, Mr. Crowley, this is more than a bit overboard.  Senator Obama has never played the 'angry black man,' and will not to do so.  Not because he sees it as political suicide, but because it simply isn't in him.  Go back, read his books, listen to his speeches, check out his work (even as a community organizer he tended away from the more strident rhetoric that such folks use on a regular basis, heck I was probably more of a rabble rouser in my days as a director for a Habitat for Humanity group in Michigan).  He simply does not have any history playing the 'angry black man'.  

'But, but he stands with one.'  Yes, his pastor does tend to be the 'angry black man' (we shall leave aside for the moment the fact that there may well be a very good reason for that anger), does it not say something that someone so close to Obama still cannot push him toward any rhetoric or action that comes anywhere close to his own?  Obama is still a bridge-builder, a conciliarist.  He is still attempting to find some hidden 'new' way forward on the issue of race, politics, and all assorted whatnot.  He has not, after 20 years exposure to this guy, ever come close to Pr. Wright's level of critique, and has now, in fact, said that Wright goes too far.  What more do you want him to do?

The 'angry black man' image will only work against Obama if it actually resonated with his own words and deeds.  Do you have any evidence of such a move?  Any?  His books are veritable pleas for the exact opposite of what Wright has been spouting.

Before we begin to pronounce the Obama apocalypse, perhaps we should best examine exactly what has happened this weekend, and what Obama actually believes.

Yes perceptions matter, but if Obama can show exactly what he believes, even in the face of such withering critique at this time, than the general will be a walk in the park.  Forwarned is forarmed.  (Such a lovely trite aphorism with which to close.)

As someone who is as deeply disturbed by Wright's comments as anyone, I do think it is important that, after the initial shock of the videos wears off, journalists, bloggers, commentators and of course voters step back and ask the right questions.

The first and most important question to ask is:  Does Obama share Wright's radical and paranoid views -- whether on foreign policy, the role of America in the world, or on race relations and the prospects for racial reconciliation?  

Needless to say, if there were any evidence that the answer to the first question were "yes," that would be the end of the discussion for me and the vast majority of Obama supporters.  We'd somehow figure out a way to learn to love Hillary, or at least find her likable enough.  

But there is not only a complete absence of evidence that the answer to that question is "yes," there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that the answer is "no."  Obama has been in elected public office for 13 years.  He wrote a very open and confessional book before he even entered public life.  Nothing in his voting record, his public speeches, or his writings suggest a hint of far left radicalism,  paranoia, or racial resentment of the kind exemplified in the snippets from the Wright speeches we've seen.  Indeed, the New York Times and a whole raft of journalists have located Obama's former Harvard classmates and law review colleagues, his former teachers, and his former college and high school classmates.  Many have been interviewed and given the opportunity to speak anonymously. Not one person has ever suggested Obama had secret radical ideas; he's always been a down-the-line patriotic liberal but not a radical.  

The second question is, if we assume Obama does not share Wright's views, is it still a significant flaw in Obama's character or capacity to be a good President that he would attend his church, consult him on matters nonpolitical, and borrow a phrase from him, the "audacity of hope"?   A full and complete answer to this question, in my mind, requires further research and study as to whether Wright was always a whack-job or whether he became more unhinged and paranoid in his views after Obama had started to cement his relationship to the Trinity church in the early 1990s. It also depends to some extent on whether there was another side of Wright back in the late 1980's to mid 1990's that demonstrates that, on matters of personal responsibility and family, he has something important to contribute as a pastor and theologian.  

But even if we assume these questions cannot be answered in a way that is very favorable to Wright, I still think that as long as the answer to the first question is that Obama does not actually share Wright's political worldview, there is no reason to conclude that Obama is a seriously flawed candidate.  it is at most fair to conclude that Obama has a minor flaw, in that he has failed to see that even associating with Wright could, in theory, have a potential incidental effect of bolstering Wright's credibility, when Wright should in an ideal world be viewed as disreputable figure.  

Now, if there were any evidence that Wright used Wright's association with Obama to lend credibility to Wright's rantings about America or race, that would be different.  If, for example. Wright had ever billed himself in making a speech like the one at Howard as "the pastor the esteemed Senator Barack Obama holds in the highest regard," that would be terribly be upsetting. Obama would have had a duty to disavow him forcefully.   But it appears that Wright does not trade, and never has traded on, Obama's credibility as a serious and sober person.  Wright's ego seems to be such that, until recently, Wright saw himself as the grand poobah and Obama as relatively insignificant.

Finally, if analysis of Wright's career demonstrates that the vast majority of Wright's sermons, particularly in the years where Obama formed his initial association, were low-key thoughtful mediations on the Bible and how to face turmoil amidst dysfunctional families (which is what the "audacity" sermon was about, and that Wright's forays into extreme anti-American paranoia began or accelerated only after Obama formed the initial bond, then I think the only fair conclusion is that this whole story is a big "so what?"  

At that point, the only "story" would be that Obama was not politically calculating enough, and that he should have distanced himself from Wright earlier and not waited until there were demands for him to do so.  If that's all Obama's guilty of, then this whole story will be shown to have been overblown.

www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0314obamamar14,0,7185898.story

I was just reading this op-ed written by Cass Sunstein, and I think I had an insight into why Obama might have stuck through 15 years of services at Trinity UCC in Chicago with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, even when he didn't agree with everything that might be said at the time.  I think this whole thing strikes us as so politically foolish, that it's hard to understand how he could have let this happen at all.  The problem with this perspective, however, may be the difference between the kind of politics we're used to seeing from our politicians and the new kind of politics that Obama claims (and may well) represent.  I don't think any of us believe that Obama holds views that are similar to that of his pastor, although the political problem for him is that people may start to think that he does.  The root of the problem, speaking for myself (and perhaps for others), is why he didn't foresee this as an issue?  Is he really not as politically smart as he's been cranked up to be?

The context that Obama's tried to put forth is that Wright is hugely popular (his is the largest congregation in the entire UCC denomination) and clearly speaks to the heart of the African-American community in Chicago -- the same community where Obama got his start as a community organizer, and which he represented in the Illinois State Senate.  He married Obama and Michelle, he baptised their daughters, and he "brought Obama to Jesus."  Yet, Obama must have heard Wright say some controversial things from time to time; if so, would it not have been so much easier for Obama to conveniently move on to a less controversial church -- to one that might not end up becoming a thorn in his political side should he ever seek higher office, say, that of U.S. Senator, or beyond?  If Obama is such a smart a politician (I think so), if his ambition is so great (which I think any presidential candidate must have), why didn't he take what was long ago clearly the more politically expedient path, and move on to another church at the slightest hint of potential future controversy?

Now I don't want to reduce his spiritual motivations to that of pure political calculation, but think about this situation as you read this op-ed.  Think about the Obama that Sunstein describes here -- fiercely independent, not afraid to listen to the deep beliefs of those who think differently -- and you'll see that he's not someone who's going to always take the politically correct or "safe" path to success.  Of course, one could also explain his remaining in Wright's church as a sign of pure loyalty -- but his public distancing of himself from Wright over a year ago, just as he announced his candidacy for the presidency, as well as his recent statements, surely underscores the limits to that hypothesis.

So what strikes me about Obama's sticking it out there is that, given where Obama came from, I can imagine that he felt it was important not to lose touch with this Afro-centric perspective -- he wanted to be challenged, not just uplifted, when he went to church.  And given his general inclination to think for himself, perhaps he got caught up in his own self-confidence, not thinking that he was going to have to "denounce and reject" the political views of someone from whom he also received a lot of spiritual insight.  Is this really all that inconsistent for a guy who's made a point of saying that he would sit down with dictators as a means of resolving political tensions!

So let's call him wildly naive, politically stupid, or unreasonably loyal, but we might also entertain the notion that he's actually practicing what he preaches -- namely, that the idea of accepting "the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point" is not something that you toss aside on your way to political power, it's the only way to get there.

Nancy Pelosi doesn't seemed bothered by all this.  She has announced she's supporting the candidate who gets the most elected delegates: www.comcast.net/.../Pelosi.Delegates

Considering that Hillary needs super delegate support to win the nomination, it appears that this controversy isn't going to prevent Obama from advancing to the general.

So far I've only seen the Wright video linked via the Politico, and I have to admit it left me wondering what the fuss was about. Well, yes, I know what the fuss is about. But what's next -- shall we vet Obama's record collection for Public Enemy disks? Even those of us growing up in the lily-white suburbs of Indy have grooved to "Fight the Power"...

I tend toward aeromonas' way of thinking. My own experience is in context of urban African-American professional middle class Christian churchgoers, many highly educated and accomplished in their fields. My partner is a clergyman who served for some considerable length of time in such a congregation, and, though white as I am also, he cultivated friendships with individual congregants that eventually developed to where he and by extension I were permitted to share in their more deeply personal individual and communal lives. Something about my partner's extraordinary (for a white person) capacity for empathy, sympathy, and genuinely shared experience with oppressed minority peoples. By way of intimate conversation at family dinners and other occasions (and my partner's relating one on one conversations between friends) I witnessed to a wholly different perspective of life  among white people. All I can say is what I have read here of Obama's complex and seemingly inscrutable relationship with Rev. Wright and "his" (Obama's)  African American experience rings familiar and entirely plausible.

Lots of good posts in this thread. Here's a simple question for the conservative critics: WWJD? I suspect he would give Obama a waiver on this issue and, for that matter, support the majority of Wright's statements. If something like this flap really leads to Obama's fall, then yes, God damn America.

Isn't this in a way good?  Wouldn't you rather have Obama frankly and meaningfully talking about his faith--his Christian faith--and have the talking heads on Fox News talking about Obama's extremist Christian pastor and having other Christian pastors on to explain?

This should at the very least put to bed the more dangerous and vile "Muslim" smear.  If Obama can survive this--and I'm certain he will--he'll have stood up for his faith.  

To what church does John McCain belong, again?

I have been advocating for Barack Obama in these quarters and elsewhere for more than a year.  I love Barack Obama.  I think he is our Lincoln, our Roosevelt.  I always believed that he has the exact combination of skills, gifts, intelligence, temperment and understanding to see us through the struggle that be first became aware on on 9/11.

I do not for a moment believe that Barack Obama holds views similar to the views expressed by his pastor and friend, Jeremiah Wright.  I think he comprehends those views, understands the reason for those views and does not dispute the idea that, to a large extent, class dynamics have profound power in our history and our politics.  (On his plane the other day, responding to Geraldine Ferraro, he was explaining the he never believed that he could ban race from the dialogue of this campaign, he was not niave, he said.  "The organizing dynamic of our political system has been race" he said."for a long time in this country" - that's a paraphrase from memory, I don't have the exact quote.  It would be worth finding -  There is an PBS documentary of historical and social politics in that seemingly offhand remark.)  He understands that Wright speaks a powerful part of the truth, but "The Truth" is bigger than pain of the underclass.  Barack still believes in redemption, and I wonder whether Rev Wright really does.  Wright is King, embittered and tired....kind of like James Baldwin after 1968, or Ralph Abernathy in his later years.  Barack is still, I think, with King and Gandhi, and still believes that there is a way out of dispair and anger.

That's what I believe. But what I believe doesn't matter.  He always had my vote, and he always will.

Barack Obama came out of Iowa on the shoulders of hopeful white folks, and young people.  He added black folks to that coalition in South Carolina and afterwards.  Black people cannot elect him.

And black people (who understand, intuitively, what Rev Wright is talking about) will cease to hope if white people turn away from him.  And he will be finished.  At least for this year.

And that may be what happens.  And that may not be the worst thing.  Four years cultivating the relationships with Unions (and workers), old fashioned ethnic democrats, and hispanics that he doesn not seem have the time or opportunity to establlish now, may be all to the good.  It was never going to be easy to elect the first African-American President (Jesus, we have two hundred years of white, anglo-saxon, protestant - one catholic who didn't go to church - men exclusively.  Not even a jew or an Italian.  Does anybody really understand how revolutionary Barack Obama would be, just as a human being?  Black folks do.).  We've been naive in that, perhaps.  It would always be a process of two steps forward, one step back.  It may be that this project has to ripen a bit.

I have no idea how Barack handles this.  I think dholiday's comments may contain a clue.  This is his test.  We will probably see the proof in Pennsylvania, if he lasts that long.

If he stays in, the math is still probably inexorable (baring a collapse at the polls of his candidacy...) and he will still arrive at the end of the primary season with an elected delegate lead.  If this buisiness still dogs him, however, all Hillary Clinton has to do is make the rounds of the hotel rooms of the superdelegates with a dvd that she pops into the player and allows each one them to see Jeremiah Wright, larger and louder than life and angry as hell, look into the camera and thunder, "GOD DAMN AMERICA" to the adulation of his congregation (a congregation that has included Barack Obama in it's midst hundreds of times over last twenty years.)  Whatever electability argument Barack ever had would die, right there.  If he reaches a critical mass of "Otherness"  (middle name, is he a muslim, raised in Indonesia, daddy from another country, wife doesn't think she's proud of America, doesn't put his hand over his heart...etc) he becomes John Kerry squared.   Superdelegates don't want a nominee that requires too much nuanced explanation, and Barack, increasingly, is nearing that point.  The wonderful story that he brings to his quest has another side, and just as many of us are thrilled that we may elect a man that the world will recognize, so a voting majority of Americans may reject him because they don't.   That's the trap he has to avoid.  And he may have just stepped in it.  Big time.

Here's hoping he has the skill to deal with this.  I pray that he has, because I still think we need him.

Those of you Talkbackers who are regular vistiors to these thread know that I have often defended Obama against the groundless (and often appalling) attacks leveled at him by Hillary and her Rovian band of Clintonistas.

But I confess that this recent flap over Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jerimiah Wright, has begun to confirm all of my worst fears about BHO himself. Not that Obama, like Wright, holds such hysterical views, but that these views appear to have been derived from a clearly defined system of belief (as opposed to an impulse, an impulsive expression of rage), a system at the center of Obama's own church, a system at the center of the world view of that church's pastor, Rev. Wright himself (Obama was married by Wright, his two daughters were baptized by Wright, the title of Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, was taken from a sermon by Wright, and the two men have been tied to each other for some twenty years). What concerns me most specifically is that this system of belief, according to Rev. Wright, is derived from the Black Liberation Theology of James Cone, which is directly related--again, according to Rev. Wright--to the Liberation Theology "developed" in Nicaragua some thirty years ago. In other words, the Liberation Theology of Ernesto Cardenal and Gustavo Gutierrez.

I have not read the work of James Cone, but I have read the writings of Cardenal and Gutierrez, and they are troubling, deeply troubling. But more to the point, they resonate with precisely those qualities in Obama's rhetoric that alarm me.    

As I said in a previous post (in early February), there was one thing that troubled me in Obama's Iowa victory speech, and in subsequent comments in NH: that we, as a people, shouldn't dwell on the world as it is, but on the world as it should be.

Here's what BHO said in January, in response to remarks HRC had made in what was then their most recent debate: "One of my opponents said, you know, 'Stop feeding the American people false hopes about what can be done. We need a reality check.' False hopes? About what we can do? What's that mean? What kind of message is that to send to the American people? We're going to focus on the constraints of what's possible instead of open it up, bust through them?. . . We don't need a leader telling us what we can't do. We need our leaders to inspire us to believe in what we can accomplish."

Yes, Obama is inspirational, and yes it is fine to focus on what we can accomplish. But it is also imperative to keep in mind precisely "the constraints of what's possible."

What troubles me now, in the wake of the Rev. Wright flap, is that these constraints, the limits on what is humanly possible, are exactly the limits that Liberation Theology overtly denies and ignores.

________________________________________________________________________________

Here are the first two paragraphs of an essay I wrote  on the subject some twenty years ago:

Liberation Theology is a utopian belief system. Gustavo Gutierrez, author of the movement's seminal text, writes of a "utopia of liberation," which he describes as the "permanent creation of a new man in a different society," one free of "all injustice, all exploitation, all dissidence among men." This utopian society, we are told, is "something possible. . .God calls us to it and assures us of its complete fulfillment." Though well-intentioned, this is an unreasonable creed; applied to government it is ominous. Nothing in human history or human nature suggests that a world, a society or even a small community permanently devoid of "all dissidence" can be realized. A complex web of necessarily disparate people can come together in perfect solidarity only through a tenuous group hallucination. A government committed to forging a utopian, or perfect, society is not indulging in a benign fantasy; it is a state fundamentally blind to the limits of its own power.

I do not mean to suggest that an adherent of Liberation Theology cannot do good works, but the extent to which his perfectionism influences his actions is a measure of the irresponsibility in them. Throughout Latin American, where the movement is widespread [again, this was written in mid-1980s], the liberationist church has provided sincere, though ill-advised, opposition to the monolithic militarism murdering even moderate reformers in nation after nation. In the United States, the impact of the theology is thin. However, this may change. Liberation Theology is related to a similar, utopian, though less extreme, American theology, one nearly a century old: the Social Gospel. An appropriate alarm to be sounded in this country is that a more fanatic version of the Social Gospel, perhaps prompted by Liberation Theology, may rise as a backlash to what is now the single most dangerous movement in America: the dispensationalist [Fundamentalist/Pentecostal] politics of the New Christian Right.  

_______________________________________________________________________________

And here are two more paragraphs from that same essay:

The year prior to the 1980 watershed in dispensationalist [Fundamentalist/Pentecostal] politics, liberationists experienced their own watershed, with the successful culmination of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. The liberationists had played a decisive role in the victory, their communidades de base (base communities) serving as breeding grounds for revolutionary theology and often revolutionary guerillas. Ernesto Cardenal, who led one such community, Solentiname, for a over a decade, is considered an exemplar of this new radical theology. A pacifist who eventually took up arms in the long insurgency, Cardenal sees the purpose of revolution as literally to "make real the Kingdom of God." This he describes as a "perfect kingdom, in which there would be no longer any exploiters on earth."

Cardenal sees perfection as the realization of complete social unity. According to him, humanity is one "organism, a single body." Only those individuals who are "united with humanity" are to "share in the life of this body." On the other hand, those "who separate from this body" are the "enemies of unity," and therefore the body must "condemn" them. Unlike the individual who stands apart from the group, the group itself possesses the most profound of all rights: ". . .everything the community decides will be ratified by God." One of the primary mechanisms, then, through which society is perfected, and all dissidence purged, is a divinely endorsed group will, unchallengeable and infallible. "According to Christ," writes Cardenal, "the people [as a body] make no mistakes. . ." In 1979, the Nicaraguan people made Ernesto Cardenal the nation's Minister of Culture.

______________________________________________________________________________

One of the things I have noticed (and recently remarked upon to a friend) is that at times BHO reminds me of people I knew in my youth, people who were then associated with a rather radical organization (where Ernesto Cardenal and the Nicaraguan revolution were held in high regard), and Obama reminded me of this again when he spoke in San Antonio. He was refuting the charge (leveled by Hillary/McCain) that his speeches are empty, said that his words were not just his words but the words of those who really mattered, those whom he met, and to whom he listened, decades earlier, when he was a community activist. The conceit here was that he is but a vehicle for those other voices, a mass of voices, in a way that reminded me then of Rousseau's expression, or embodiment, in one leader: of the General Will.

This is the aspect of BHO's character that I find the most familiar, and also the most troubling.

I'm ashamed that you can't embrace an American who embraces other Americans.  Like or not Rev. Wright's rhetoric, he and his are part of this country, and have been for longer than I or you have.  The cut-them-out stance that the friend of my enemy is my enemy unless he denounces and renounces my enemy has to go.  No one would expect you to cut out your relations.  No one should expect that of Obama.  or Clinton.  She's not going to be rejected, because she doesn't cut out Ferraro.  Both Obama and Clinton have done what is necessary.

They shouldn't be rejected because they can't and, as human beings with relationships, won't do more.

And your "hands-off" stance that no, I could embrace him. but I can't bet on my neighbors to, is not a journalistic adherence to neutrality.  It's encouraging abandonment.

You write, you're not prepared to render judgment.  By "not being prepared," well guess what.  You've rendered a clear judgment.  America will never be a better country if everyone is like you.

And one generation from now ... why would America be any different?  You don't know it will be better.  Don't hide behind the future.

Tony

One of the most interesting aspects of the Wright videos and their connection to Obama is that they force out of the closet a vast divide in the political conversation between blacks and non-blacks in America. Wright's views are not really unusual among politicized non-middle class blacks (e.g., see the polling data among African-Americans on AIDS, or consider the conceptual and attitudinal similarities between Wright's sermons and Orlando Patterson's diatribe in the NYTimes) . But they are rarely spoken where non-blacks can hear them. Welcome to the you-tube age in racial politics.

This may ultimately be all to the good. While Wright's version of the world may claim to be a version of the truth, it is not a truth on which a post-racial political community may be founded, nor is it one that non-black Americans will have much tolerance for listening to (let alone voting in support of). It is untenable as a basis for an integrative sharing of political power. The necessity for mainstream African-Americans to move beyond Wright's themes of anger, paranoia, and victimization is what Obama confirms by his vehment disavowal of Wright's version of things. If this disavowal becomes more the center of our racial politcs (including Michele's racial politics--i do wonder what she really thinks of Wright), then I think we will have advanced a major step. This might get us to a point where Hillary's comments about MLK & LBJ or Bill's dissing of Obama's victory in South Carolina will not result in automatic and mindlless charges of racism.

We ain't there yet. There are still a lot of unanswered questions. For example, apparently Wright's videos circulated in South Carolina before the primary. If that is true, how did that happen? There is a lot more changing that has to happen before the fundamental matix of the dialogue is altered. But this whole blow up may turn out to be a catalyst for a new way of talking about race, leading us to a further stage of evolution.

Joseph, good to see you back.

But i think you are complicating Barack's politcal and social intellectual origins way too much.  

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" Gandhi said.

He spent a lifetime elaborating on that insight, as did Martin Luthor King.  Barack has a picture of each on the wall of his senate office.  I was a young man in '68 and remember the times and the intellectual gene pool that Rev Wright came out of.  And Barack came to his "identity" in a very political way...deliberately through his romantic yearning to have been part of the movement that Wright was present for.  I suspect it is as simple as that.  The hope of that time has curdled in lots of folks like Rev Wright, but Barack has it's spirit and is trying to revive and realize the vision at the core of it.  Everything he preaches comes from that moment when folks stood up and "bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice".  That's what he says.  WE are history.  We change it with our acts.  That's the transformaitonal political figure in him.  I think to tag him with "Liberation Theology" complicates and obscures the far more American and prosaic roots of his worldview.  I suspect that the Rev Wright we see now and Rev Wright that brought Barack to Jesus (which was more a deliberate intellectual and moral decison than an emotional one.  He did not, he says, "fall out" in church that day) may be seperated by years of disappointment with the way history and high hopes turned out.  But you don't turn on your friends, who even in dispair, have a wisdom about the world that needs to be comprehended before it can be confounded.

The man who gave the Selma speech earlier this year is not an out of the mainstream radical.  He walks in the shoes of Gandhi and King and wants to move that moral and political calculus forward without leaving anybody behind.  Even disappointed old lions.  

I don't think Ernesto Cardenal is a relevant figure for 2008, but he was a member of a government in Nicaragua that created the only political system in Latin America in which, among other things, the U.S. ambassador could drive around in safety -- an ambassador, it's worth mentioning, who at that very moment represented an administration that was funding and supplying a bunch of terrorists in that country.  I strongly suspect that Cardenal, an Hispanic socialist with a genuinely global outlook, would have very little in common with Jim Wright, a black Baptist who, like so many Americans of any hue, has really little knowledge of the wider world outside.

PC- an evenhanded non-partisan comment!! I'm impressed, truly. I wonder how much of it is a generational thing in the African American community. That's how Obama has framed it, and I think there's an element of truth to it.

I suspect that class also plays a part. Older/poorer African Americans are more likely to hold the views you describe in my experience. YOunger/more affluent African Americans are more likely to hold Obama's views. But the two coexist. I have younger African American friends who tolerate such talk from their parents' generations (and understand it coming from the poorer, more marginalized members of the community). They don't agree, but it's not as if such sentiments are seen as unfair or dishonest. Rather, they're just reflective of teh older experience.

I actually had a pastor with similar views, who was in many other ways, a very godly and generous man. I didn't agree with him, but I DID continue to attend the church, as there was a lot of good he said and did as well.

vanwurs-

Thanks for the kind words. Nice to be exchanging with you again as well.

You write: "I think to tag him [BHO] with 'Liberation Theology' complicates and obscures the far more American and prosaic roots of his worldview. I suspect that the Rev Wright we see now and Rev Wright that brought Barack to Jesus. . .may be seperated by years of disappointment with the way history and high hopes turned out. "

I just want to be clear, vanwurs, that I was not the one who tagged Obama with Liberation Theology. It was Obama's pastor and friend of twenty years, Rev. Wright, who declared his own allegiance--repeatedly--to Liberation Theology (and did so, of all places, on the Fox News Channel).

As to whether the Rev. Wright we see now is, as you put it, "sepapated by years of disappointment" from the Rev. Wright who brought Barack to Jesus, well, when it comes to the Reverend's adherence to Liberation Theology, this is simply not the case.

Here's what Rev. Wright said recently on the Fox News Channel:

WRIGHT: "The black value system, which was developed by the congregation [at Trinity Unity Church of Christ], by laypersons of the congregation, 26 years ago, [is] very similar to the gospel [INAUDIBLE] developed by laypersons in Nicaragua during the whole liberation theology movement, 26, 28, 30 years ago, yes."

In other words, according to Rev. Wright, the theology at the center of his church, which is also Obama's church (and has been his church since 1992)--the theology of this church has been the same theology for the past 26 years, and it is very similar, according to Rev. Wright, and has been similiar for several decades, to the gospel of Liberation Theology as it was practised during the Nicaraguan revolution.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Need more convincing. Here's an excerpt from the transcript of Rev. Wright's appearance on the Fox New Channel:

WRIGHT: If you're not going to talk about theology in context, if you're not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the ‘60s, [INAUDIBLE] black liberation theology, that started with Jim Cone in 1968, and the writings of Cone. . .

HANNITY: Reverend, I've got to get this in. . .

WRIGHT: Do you know liberation theology, sir? Do you know liberation theology?

HANNITY: I studied theology; I went to a seminary. And I studied Latin.

WRIGHT: Do you know black liberation theology?

HANNITY: I'm very aware of what you're calling black liberation, but let me get my question out.

[CROSSTALK]

WRIGHT: I said, do you know black theology?

HANNITY: Reverend, I'm going to give you a chance to answer my question.

WRIGHT: How many of Cone's books have you read? How many of Cone's book have you read?

HANNITY: Reverend, Reverend?

[CROSSTALK]

WRIGHT: How many books of Cone's have you [r]ead?. . .

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Dr. Wright, it's Alan Colmes. First of all, I think Barack Obama put it correctly to the "Chicago Tribune" when he said that he'd be puzzled that the conservatives would object or quibble with the bulk of a document--which is your church's document--that espouses profoundly conservative values of self-reliance and self-help. That's what you're talking about on your Web site, self-reliance and self-help for the committee that your church serves. I don't see what the problem should be with that.

WRIGHT: That comes out of the perspective of liberation theology and black liberation theology. And I keep asking him, how many books of Cone's has he read?. . . How many liberation theologians does he know?

______________________________________________________________________________

All of which is to say, according to Rev. Wright, the central theology of Obama's church is, and for the past 26 years has been, a theology which is "very similar to," and which "comes out of," Liberation Theology, specifically the Liberation Theology of the Nicaraguan revolution.

I'm sorry, vanwurs, but I do find this deeply troubling.

Joe.....

You got me there.  I guess Wright knows a great deal about Liberation Theology and has been influenced by it.  I, on the other hand, don't know shit about Liberation Theology.  Other than it is a term I heard a lot back in the eighties and it seemed to be influential in the Central American insurgencies.  

But if I don't know much about Liberation Theology, I do know a little bit about the political energy that came out of the sixties, and I know it to be eclectic as hell.  It reached out to all kinds of intellectual influences and subsumed, and probably misunderstood them all, ending up with something as unsystematic and as eclectic as can be.  Reverend Wright probably read "Wretched of the Earth" (more power to him....I could never get past the interminable and unreadable introduction) and Jim Cone, and listened to Les McCann's "Compared to What?" and John Lennon's "imagine" and Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On?", and it all went into the mix.  There's nothing "dangerous" about Reverend Wright.  Provacative and disturbing, but only because he represents that subliminal boogeyman at the root of America's fantiasies for hundreds of years.  Nat Turner becomes Marcus Garvey becomes Malcom X and Rap Brown and ends up as Louis Farrakhan and, once in while, it would seem....Jeremihah Wright.   He scares us (white us) because he says, in loud voice, that we are full of shit and our "expectionalism" is a pretentious lie.  He reminds us of the gap between our reality and our ideals, and he  makes us uneasy.  But he doesn't lead a revolution. There are no troops training in the basement of Trinity church, and the foundations of the Republic are not trembling.

I have been listening to and following Barack Obama since 2004.  I have read both his books (one great, one not so much..) and I have listened to a whole bunch of speeches and read any articles he has written.  Whatever Liberation Theology as a self contained world view with an internally logical political imperative may mean to you.....I don't see any of it in Barack Obama't thinking or philosophy or the way he practices his craft and governs.  Unless he really is some kind of "Manchurian Candidate" (and the kinds of Manchurian Candidate he is seems to be varied and diverse.  Wahabist youth trained to be mole and take over America for Islamic fascism.  Now he's a covert Liberation Theologist with a dark totalitarian tendency who was recruited and groomed by Rev. Wright twenty years ago and injected into the bloodstream of Illinois politics.), then he is pretty much what he presents himself as. (And has been since he was a young gradualte student at Harvard).  A smart and insightful guy who came from a background of racial and ethnic diversity, was raised in various parts of the world and has experience of realities beyond our borders, and loves King and Gandhi and studied Alinsky (and probably Fanon and Cone) and knows the perils and disappointments of the poor and disenfranchised in America and elsewhere...... and is some kind of synthesis of all these things.  Oh, and wants to change the world, but believes that the world changes when enough people get up and do something different.  I think you are way too worried that because he's been exposed to "Liberation Theology" he is hopelessly infected by it.  

I just think he has a nice, cool and detached intellect, levened by a strong sense of irony, that doesn't suggest the ideologue or the abstact theorist with a thirst for power.   I think Barack Obama is just what he appears to be.  

So I can't argue Liberation Theology with you, but I can argue Barack Obama.  And he is too grounded to be the secret vangard of any totalitarian intellectual cult.  It just doesn't compute.  

mice,

i agree that a great deal of it is generational and that much of it is class based. a very interesting question will be how african-americans respond to obama's distancing himself from wright.

part of what is happening is that the racial voices of african-americans are becoming not only more differentiated but also less confluent and mutually compatible. this, in my view, is a very good thing because it means that the social ties that bind are no longer primarily racial for many people.

Pccostello,

All the African Americans I know know exactly what Barack Obama has to do to get himself elected President of the United States.  And they're cool with it.

I may be very wrong about this, but there's something a little odd about the way liberation theology is being deployed in this discussion.  As far as I know, it's essentially a Catholic thing that had, in particular, a sense of international solidarity with victims of oppression that matched the old transnational reach of the Church.  From the 1970s onward, inspired by a small number of theologians in Europe, LT fans ran with that concept and argued that the institution of the Church cannot be neutral in a situation of gross injustice and violence -- that it's a distortion of the message of the Gospels to suggest that only the soul is of importance, as if this life of ours were just so much throw-away packaging.  It's certainly possible that someone like Wright has a Baptist/African-American version of that in his head, but it's not how the term is usually understood.  The very inward orientation and "American-ness" of the UCC seems to work against the Catholic and internationalist culture of LT.

However, an important question is whether the version of liberation theology that was popular in the 1980s has any purchase now.  One major and almost fatal problem that LT faced was that it had next to nothing to say about countries under Soviet domination, for example.  So Catholic Poles in Solidarity regarded Catholic Sandinistas as evil communists, pure and simple, despite the fact that there were major similarities between the philosophical bases of the two movements.  German author Gunther Grass once wrote a really good piece that explored the connections between Lech Walesa and Daniel Ortega and imagined how they might explain their positions (Catholic moral education, anti-establishment politics) to each other, despite the hostility the East-West divide generated.

The good parts of liberation theology involved spreading the notion that the Church has assets, and that these assets don't have to be deployed on behalf of the ruling elite in any particular place.  The bad parts were a quasi-deliberate blindness to one particular part of the world.

vanwurs-

You write: "There's nothing 'dangerous' about Reverend Wright." But you also admit: "I guess Wright knows a great deal about Liberation Theology and has been influenced by it.  I, on the other hand, don't know shit about Liberation Theology."

Well, vanwurs, I do know a bit about Liberation Theology--I have read the essential texts--and I can tell you that its idea system is indeed quite dangerous and quite deluded.

_______________________________________________________________________________

For one thing, and it is a very significant thing, in Liberation Theology, the line between faith and reason is obscured. Utopia, writes Gustavo Guiterrez (the author of the theology's seminal text), "belongs to the RATIONAL order [emphasis in the original]." For him, all ideology which is not utopian is necessarily "empirical, irrational." It "masks" reality in that it obstructs the "creation of a new man in a new society."  The utopia of liberation, on the other hand, leads to an "authentic and scientific knowledge of reality." For Gutierrez, then, the reasonable is artificial, the fantastic scientifc. (Note that he equates the "empirical" with the "irrational.")

Gutierrez writes: "History, contrary to essentialist and static thinking, is not the development of potentialities preexistent in man; it is rather the conquest of new, qualitatively different ways of being a man in order to achieve an ever more total and complete fulfillment of the individual in solidarity with all mankind."

In other words, Gutierrez dismisses as a prerequisite for utopia any utopian "potentialities preexistent in man." Thus, the need to confront the limitations of human nature--the need to confront limitations of reality itself--is obscured.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The above three paragraphs, vanwurs (like four of the paragraphs in my first post on this thread), were taken from an article I wrote some twenty years ago, and the thesis of that article was this: that the Liberation Theology of Gutierrez, of Cardenal, of the  Nicaraguan revolution, is as deluded and dangerous as the dispensationalist theology of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, and other Fundamentalist and Pentecostal leaders of what was then described as the New Christian Right. (By the way, nearly twenty-five years ago, in 1984, I debated Falwell for an hour, live on CNN.)

And now we learn from BHO's pastor and spiritual advisor, Rev. Wright--Obama was married by Wright, his two daughters were baptized by Wright, the title of Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, was taken from a sermon by Wright, and the two men have been tied to each other for some twenty years--now we learn from Rev. Wright that Liberation Theology has been the central theology of his, and Obama's, church for the past 26 years, the church for which Wright himself has served as pastor.

I like Obama, vanwurs, I have been moved by his words, I voted for him in the NYS primary, but it would be a gross denial of reality not to acknowledge that his connection to Rev. Wright is, to say the least, disturbing.

Joseph,

Other than the fact that Reverend Wright claims to be inflenced by Liberation Theology (which begs the question of what his particular understanding of it is.  I know lots of folks who claim to influenced by the words of Christ, but only seem to remember the part where he said "the poor will always be with you" and "whosoever believes in me shall have everlasting life.") is there anything in Barack Obama's writings or speeches or articles or political programs and proposals or temperment or organizational style or any other aspect of him or his campaign that reflects an adherence to the ideas of Liberation Theology as you understand them?

And if not, do you believe that he deliberately misleading us all?  Do you believe that he is Trojan Horse?

(And is it possible that even Reverend Wright may find Liberation Theology a useful organizational tool without swallowing whole all of it's philosophical tenets and presumptions.  That would correspond the to pragmatic, utilitarian, essentially libertarian and fundamentally skeptical, eclectic nature of sixties radicalism, particulary African American radicalism.  And I really expect to understand Wright, you need look closer to home, at that tradition of sixties radicalism conjioned with the urban black church.)

This is not that big a deal. If Obama himself had been caught  making these statements it would be a different story of course, but these "guilt-by association" charges are never sustained for very long, because the voters aren't that interested in them..  I can't think of any that had a serious impact on a presidential election in the last 50 years.  Ultimately, voters look at  the candidate, and not at statements made by associates and supporters.  The PA primary is still six weeks away.  This will be gone as a significant vote-changing issue long before that.

"Liberation theology in late 20th-century Roman Catholicism, a movement centered in  Latin America that sought to apply religious faith by aiding the poor and oppressed through involvement in political and civic affairs. It stressed both heightened awareness of the socioeconomic structures that caused social inequities and active participation in changing those structures."

The current Britannica (cd-rom) definition is admittedly a bit narrow and misses a lot, but I think it's important not to confuse Wright's racially exclusive or at least racially paranoid black millenarianism with Catholic liberation theology 1968-1990.  To the best of my knowledge, LT never proposed any kind of racial essentialism as the key to freedom.  In Latin America, it did emphasize that the mestizo and indigenous peoples had gotten, in contrast to the "white" class, a raw deal from most nation-states in the region, but did not propose a kind of "Europeans are the devil" theory; nor, in fact, did LT ever have much interest in the kind of "patriarchal anger" culture of denunciation that's so common in the U.S., whether it's Jim Wright or some Anglo fundamentalist preacher.

I'm very much an Obama supporter, and maybe that blinds me to how this will play. But I think this is an overly excited post. This might become a media firestorm, but I think that has more to do with the media than Obama. Does it make you think that Obama is a closet radical? A manchurian candidate who is really trying to destroy America, the great satan? Almost everyone, particularly outside the sanitized corridor of Washington, associates with people with controversial views. If the media wants to use this to portray people as monstrosities, there is no stopping them. But it's not how things should be.

PC- I think you're right, tehre are definitely good things about it. I suspect what is happening, though, is that as the older generation dies off, you'll see this view kept alive primarily in an African American underclass left behind by white people and by middle class (and up) Black people. It's certainly good that there are a lot more Black people that don't feel this way than there used to be. But the persistence of this attitude and the experiences that foster it, among a large subset of African Americans remains a problem.

Joseph: ditto on thanks for the interesting posts and nice to see you back.

I think this story will largely burn-out over the next few weeks -- I think the damage Obama did to himself here was how flatly he denied knowing about Wright's views -- that sounds, well, Clintonesque, and it highlights that Obama is a bit of a Rosarch test for voters.  Look at Matt Yglesias and Marty Peretz -- both read transcripts of his last major "address" on Israel (a town meeting with Florida's congressman Wexler) and reached diametrically opossitte conclusions.  The thing I've found most troubling about Obama, other than his refusal to back reform candidates in Chicago/Illinois, has been Darfur -- prior to his run for the presidency he was highly visible with Clooney et al. calling for forceful action.  Since then he never raises Darfur and when asked is indistinguishable from Administration (an article in TNR criticized this as well).  

So what should he do?  Define himself better -- yes, I know, he has detailed policy positions backing up his loftier rhetoric on the campaign, but he could tell us his priorities.  What's his first 100 day agenda?  What does he promise to accomplish that voters should hold him to should he seek re-election?  Be bold on substance and people will soon forget the crazy old uncle.  

van,

do you mean to say that blacks you know think obama is dissembling and being disingenuous in his statements about wright in order to get elected president?

There is a part of liberation theology that either Wright has abandoned or that Obama never has embraced.  In one of the three or four rants that have all been merged into one YouTube video, Wright rants that the United States is a racist country that will never elect a black President!  Cuomo is obviously smart and deeply informed but it requires a bit of what the Marxists used to call "dialectics" to convince me that a sentiment like that is consistent with the "infinite possibilities" thread of liberation theology that Cuomo fears Obama adheres to.  

The reality is that the liberation theologists did not invent the rhetorical trope of urging for a future beyond what appears possible.  That trope is in the commencement address by, of all people, Hillary Rodham, Wellesley '69.  Read the speech.  It is unbelievably awful and so poorly written that's actually had to discern any meaning.  But it's sprinkled with a heavy dose of transcend-what-appears-to-be-possible utopianism.  For that matter RFK espoused that way of thinking, and though "dream things as they never were and ask why not?" is often attributed to him, I think RFK credited one of the ancient Greeks for that phrase. So the line Cuomo tries to draw is tenuous, because its premise that dreaming of things that don't appear to be possible, but actually are, is the property of the early Sandinistas.

(As an aside, read that  Hillary commencement speech -- Google "Hillary Rodham Wellesley commencement" -- which is the only thing we know Hillary wrote herself.  Its logic is so disjointed and the writing style so weak that you would not be surprised that she flunked the bar a few years later.  One of the bothersome themes of this season's political commentary from aging feminists is that Hillary is the "smart girl at the top of the class" and Obama, despite his magna cum laude HLS graduation and ease passing the bar and then teaching at U of Chicago, is the "affable jock" promoted ahead of the smarter one.  The truth is that, while Hillary plainly is plenty smart, I would not be surprised if Obama has at least 15 IQ points on Hillary; he certainly is a more capable large-concept thinker.  Hillary is what they used to call 'book smart.'  She can recall a lot of facts accurately and keep information organized in her head well, but she has never made an observation that has caused me to pause and rethink an assumption or idea I previously held.  Obama, particularly in long-form interviews, as well as in his first book, has caused me to do that many times.).

I've know some pretty smart, practicing Catholics who have good friends, priests, who believe that on certain occasions statues have cried tears of blood.

Should a Catholic who has a friend who believes that kind of superstitious nonsense be guilty of magical thinking by association?

I have some friends who are nuts, don't you?

Interesting post, lymon1, and notably Obama brought up Darfur on his own yesterday.  For me the jury is out on the premise of you post, lymon, because though it seems somewhat improbable, it may be the case that the week-to-week fare of the Trinity church was not angry incendiary rants and calls to damn America or demonize white people.  Recall, one of Wright's most outrageous rants was at Howard University.

It's quite possible that, at Trinity every week, there was ordinary personal-responsibility, obligation-to-the-needy uplift, coupled with lefty but not incendiary, foaming-at-the-mouth pronouncements about the need for less US aggressiveness overseas.  But heck, a whole host of White protestant Episcopalian denominations that I'm aware of have ministers who. well before Iraq (where they'd have a point), ascend the pulpit from time to time and make what I consider to be unduly harsh judgments about US foreign policy decisions.  The nuclear freeze became, I believe, an Episcopalian minister talking point back in the 80's.  A lot of Republicans belonged to those congregations and probably even got to know and like some of the ministers and probably even asked them to perform wedding ceremonies and baptisms.  Those Republicans might even have been moved by particular words or phrases used by those ministers, even while rejecting as rank nonsense the ministers' forays into nuclear weapons strategy.

Suppose Obama decides to write a third book, also drawing inspiration from Wright's sermons. He decides to entitle it "God Damn America: Why I Refuse to Wear a Flag Pin and Why My Wife Has Never Been Proud of America."

Many African-Americans would feel that they knew exactly what he meant, and that he was right. But could Obama then ever run for president?

This is the cutting edge problem and contradiction involving race and political power. African-Americans can't have it both ways. They either have to genuinely reject Wright, and also reject diatribe's like Orlando Patterson's in the NYTimes, or they have to accept a limited role at the centers of poltical power in an community that is mostly non-black.

Many African-Americans would like to say, and may fully believe, that what Wright is saying is fundamentally correct even if he has said it a bit too directly for white ears to hear. But as long as African-Americans hang on to a sense of victimization and anger--like Orlando Patterson's or Jermiah Wright's--then the centers of politcal power in the larger political community--offices like governor, senator, and president--will remain largely unavailable to them.

The disappearance of the sense of victimazation and of touchy anger about racially insensitive remarks would mark a true sea change in our racial politics.

Obama's record on this so far--given his long, intimate ties to Wright and his comments about Clinton's MLK-LBJ remarks--is at best ambiguous. This is his politcal problem now.

LDuncan -- it's interesting that nobody has really parsed the various Wright clips in question.  I think the "Hillary will never know..." was trivial -- people can rightly argue that she's been called a bitch and faced glass ceilings, but by and large people get what Wright was saying in that rant.  Then there's the 9/11 rant which is pretty bad (especially throwing Hiroshima into the mix -- this makes me think Wright opposed the war to unroot the Taliban from Afghanistan as well as the war against Iraq).   But what put Wright in the off-the-charts territory for me was the whites invented AIDS conspiracy charge (and if you listen to black newstalk radio, that's sometimes expressed as "Jews invented AIDS" conspiracy).  That's beyond a pastor commenting on national policy, that's a battle cry, but I'm willing to believe that those "doubly beyond the pale" comments were relatively rare and Obama was unaware of them.  Regardless, because of Wright's tone and the degree of extremism, I don't think most voters are going to analogize to the political comments they've heard in their own churches, or they'll find a way to distinguish them to fit their predispositions towards Obama/Hillary/McCain.  

vanwurs-

You ask: ". . .is there anything in Barack Obama's writings or speeches or articles or political programs and proposals or temperment or organizational style or any other aspect of him or his campaign that reflects an adherence to the ideas of Liberation Theology as you understand them?"

Well, vanwurs, I think that it is a fair question, but I think I have already answered it in my first post on this thread.

For your convenience, though, I'll repeat here what I said above:

As I said in a previous post (in early February), there was one thing that troubled me in Obama's Iowa victory speech, and in subsequent comments in NH: that we, as a people, shouldn't dwell on the world as it is, but on the world as it should be.

Here's what BHO said in January, in response to remarks HRC had made in what was then their most recent debate: "One of my opponents said, you know, 'Stop feeding the American people false hopes about what can be done. We need a reality check.' False hopes? About what we can do? What's that mean? What kind of message is that to send to the American people? We're going to focus on the constraints of what's possible instead of open it up, bust through them?. . . We don't need a leader telling us what we can't do. We need our leaders to inspire us to believe in what we can accomplish."

Yes, Obama is inspirational, and yes it is fine to focus on what we can accomplish. But it is also imperative to keep in mind precisely "the constraints of what's possible."

What troubles me now, in the wake of the Rev. Wright flap, is that these constraints--the limits on what is humanly possible--are exactly the kind of limits that Liberation Theology overtly denies and ignores.

For more on Liberation Theology's denial of the limits of what is humanly possible--an overt denial of the limits of reality--please see my third post on this thread, specifically the quotes from Gustavo Gutierrez, who wrote the seminal test of Liberation Theology.

For instance: Utopia, writes Guiterrez, "belongs to the RATIONAL order [emphasis in the original]." And:  For Gutierrez, all ideology which is not utopian is necessarily "empirical, irrational." Note that he equates the "empirical" with the "irrational."

Gutierrez writes: "History, contrary to essentialist and static thinking, is not the development of potentialities preexistent in man; it is rather the conquest of new, qualitatively different ways of being a man in order to achieve an ever more total and complete fulfillment of the individual in solidarity with all mankind."

In other words, Gutierrez dismisses as a prerequisite for utopia any utopian "potentialities preexistent in man." Thus, the need to confront the limitations of human nature--the need to confront limitations of reality itself--is obscured.

Which is to say, one of the core tenets of Liberation Theology is that we shouldn't dwell on the world as it is, but on the world as it should be.

______________________________________________________________________________

One of the other things I have noticed (and recently remarked upon to a friend) is that at times BHO reminds me of people I knew in my youth, people who were then associated with a rather radical organization (where Ernesto Cardenal and the Nicaraguan revolution were held in high regard), and Obama reminded me of this again when he spoke in San Antonio. He was refuting the charge (leveled by Hillary/McCain) that his speeches are empty, said that his words were not just his words but the words of those who really mattered, those whom he met, and to whom he listened, decades earlier, when he was a community activist. The conceit here was that he is but a vehicle for those other voices, a mass of voices, in a way that reminded me then of Rousseau's expression, or embodiment, in one leader: of the General Will.

This is the aspect of BHO's character that I find the most familiar, and also the most troubling.

And the presumption that one can know the General Will--the will of a single, supposedly unified societal body--is a conceit at the heart of Liberation Theology.

Again, please see my first post on this thread, re: Ernesto Cardenal: Cardenal sees perfection as the realization of complete social unity. According to him, humanity is one "organism, a single body." Those "who separate from this body" are the "enemies of unity," and therefore the body must "condemn" them.

And this group, this body, according to Cardenal, possesses the most profound of all rights: ". . .everything the community decides will be ratified by God."

"According to Christ," writes Cardenal, "the people [as a body] make no mistakes. . ."

In Liberation Theology, then, one of the primary mechanisms through which society is perfected, and all dissidence purged, is a divinely endorsed group will (a General Will), unchallengeable and infallible.

_______________________________________________________________________________

One more thing: as I noted in my first post on this thread, Liberation Theology is related to a similar, utopian, though less extreme, American theology, one now a century old: the Social Gospel.

And what I wrote in an article in the mid-1980s is this: An appropriate alarm to be sounded in this country is that a more fanatic version of the Social Gospel, perhaps prompted by Liberation Theology, may rise as a backlash to what is now the single most dangerous movement in America: the dispensationalist [Fundamentalist/Pentecostal] politics of the New Christian Right.  

Last night on the Fox New Channel, after he had denied being familiar with virtually everything Rev. Wright had said on those much aired tapes, Obama did admit to hearing one thing--and it was the only thing he did admit to heaing in person--BHO said that he had heard Rev. Wright preach the Social Gospel.

_______________________________________________________________________________

lymon-

Thanks for the kind words. Nice to be exchanging again with you as well.

You write: "I think this story will largely burn-out over the next few weeks. . ."

You may be right, lymon, but my point here is not that this story will get any traction, so as to affect the outcome of a very heated primary battle. My point is that Obama's connection to Rev. Wright is cause for concern.

To put it another way, in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan associated himself with religious figures such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Tim LaHaye, it was, to say the least, cause for concern. And I remember many of us to Reagan's left (including me) sounding the alarm about the lunatic rhethoric and the lunatic theology of these preachers.

Well, Obama's association with Rev. Wright and his theology is at least as troubling, at least as alarming, as Reagan's association with Falwell, Robertson, LaHaye, and their theology, if not more so--in that Obama's association with Wright is more intimate: Obama was married by Wright, his two daughters were baptized by Wright, the title of Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, was taken from a sermon by Wright, and the two men have been tied to each other for some twenty years.

And not to acknowledge this fact seems a gross denial of reality.

Thank you naomi88 for neatly separating political reality from pundit navel-gazing.

Thank you LDuncan for reminding us that the trope that Hillary is brilliant and/or accomplished at anything in her own right is pure hype.

If you want a demonstration of the real manner in which being a black man makes Obama's job harder, it is not that he has to deal with Republicans (and now Hillary) playing upon race hatred and fear.  It is that he is highly constrained by cultural expectations in how he can respond to attacks.  If he were not black and some political zombie (back from the political dead) like Geraldine Ferraro had said, "Obama is only where he is because he is [  ]" he could have ripped both the zombie and Hillary five new ones by using her phony claims of experience for target practice.  But if Obama did that, the spectacle of a black man "beating up" on a white woman would stir up all sorts of bad cultural baggage, on the surface for some, buried for others.  And Hillary, as always, would play the victim.  She was even willing to do so in the context of the debates, complaining that the "men were ganging up on her."  She claims that she has "crossed the commander in chief threshold" (wherever and whatever that is), ready to take on Osama bin Laden I presume, but bridles at tough questioning.  This only works at all because Hillary is a woman,  Although a self-proclaimed feminist, she is just as willing to exploit pre-feminist attitudes for sympathy as she is to rely on residual racism to garner votes in PA.

But Obama is doing fine despite all of this.  For people who are truly gifted, you add on constraints like these and they just lift their game and emerge even more obviously brilliant and capable, whereas, when it is too easy, they, like everyone else, get sloppy and make dumb mistakes.  I stand on my prediction that, far from dropping out over the Rev. Wright flap, Obama will solve this cultural puzzle and emerge further ahead of his rivals.

We should also take note of the NYT article today reporting that the super-delegate shift towards Obama is not just in numbers.  The meme is now emerging, from the highest precincts, that the supers are most likely to follow the "will of the voters," and not just state by state or locality by locality, but overall.  This is the deathknell for Hillary's campaign.  She has done her best to persuade the supers and everyone else that they should be willing to reject the popular choice in her favor.  She has failed, and they are now starting to say so out loud.  I thought this was obvious quite a while ago (ask me sometime for a short explanation of why politicians do what they do, but the two-word answer is "public opinion").  The fact that the supers are now saying it out loud is the beginning of the public recognition that Hillary's campaign is over.  The people in power are no longer afraid at least to start saying so.  It is self-fulfilling in any case.

That this is occurring in the very midst of the tempest in a teapot about Wright should tell all the posters here something about the political reality that is emerging and the relative unimportance of Wright.  Sometimes, even in politics, you have to stop gazing at your own navel and take note of what is actually occurring in the world.

Correct lymon.  These Wright comments will be absorbed to people's predispositions (of which this thread is  evidence enough).  They are not at all the sorts of things that change the paradigm so long as Obama repeats for a while that he "denounces and rejects" them.

Great theory Joseph Cuomo, but not what is actually happening out in the political world.  All theories, no matter how seemingly persuasive, need to be tested against reality.  The idea that this event is going to change the race in any profound way is just wrong and events are already starting to demonstrate that this is the case.

LDuncan-

You write: "Cuomo is obviously smart and deeply informed but it requires a bit of what the Marxists used to call 'dialectics' to convince me that a sentiment like that [Rev. Wright's rant that America will never elect a black president] is consistent with the 'infinite possibilities' thread of liberation theology that Cuomo fears Obama adheres to."  

Well, LDuncan, one of the points I have been making here on this thread is this: that Rev. Wright himself has declared that he adheres to Liberation Theology as it was practised during the Nicaraguan revolution, in other words the Liberation Theology of Ernesto Cardenal, and of Gustavo Gutierrez (who wrote the theology's seminal text).

Another point that I have been making--and, I confess, I thought it was fairly obvious--is that Liberation Theology itself is NOT RATIONAL. Read Gutierrez, LDuncan, read Cardenal, read my previous posts on this thread. Gutierrez equates the "empirical" with the "irrational." He believes that utopia "belongs to the RATIONAL order."

In other words, the beliefs of Gutierrez, the beliefs of Cardenal, the beliefs of Rev. Wright, the belief system of Liberation Theology itself--none of it is reasonable, or logical, or consistent with even the most minimal requirements of common sense.

Which is to say, for you to point out a contradiction in the rantings of Rev. Wright is thoroughly consistent with everything I've been saying on this thread.

You also write: "The reality is that the liberation theologists did not invent the rhetorical trope of urging for a future beyond what appears possible."

Well, LDuncan, I have repeatedly said that Liberation Theology is related to a similar, utopian, though less extreme, American theology, ONE THAT IS NOW A CENTURY OLD: the Social Gospel.

And let me be clear (though I confess that until now I didn't think this needed to be said): utopian thinking predates Liberation Theology, it predates the Social Gospel. I am not now, nor have I ever, suggested that Liberation Theology invented, as you put it, "the rhetorical trope of urging for a future beyond what appears possible."

What I have said, repeatedly, is that Liberation Theology has organized a SYSTEM OF BELIEF around the notion that we can deny the limits of what is possible, the limits of human nature, the limits of reality itself, in order to achieve a goal whose potentiality is, to quote Gutierrez, NOT "preexistent in man."

As for whether Hillary or Bobby Kennedy has ever said anything rather fanciful, yes, I'm sure they have (by the way, anyone familiar with my posts here at Talkback knows that I am no fan of Hillary's), but there is a clear and obvious difference between longing for a future unlike anything we have ever known, on the one hand, and, on the other, adhering to a SYSTEM OF BELIEF--as Gutierrez and Cardenal and Rev. Wright evidently do--a system of belief that is founded upon the CERTAINTY THAT HUMANITY WILL ACHIEVE UTOPIA ON EARTH, no matter what the evidence, no matter what the reality.

Finally, LDuncan, as I have said repeatedly (though apparently you must have missed it), my concern is this: that Obama has such a long, such a public, such an initmiate tie, to someone who espouses a system of belief as irrational, as unbalanced, as deluded as that of the Rev. Wright.

And yet another point I have been making on this thread is this: that Obama's association with the  

My god i can't believe the posts here. Intellectually stimulating philosophical discussions about the sources of Wright's theology and twisted worldview are so not the point here. Obama is doomed to lose the election if nominated. I can virtually guarantee that Obama has lost florida over this. The jewish retirees in florida are not a hotbed of post racial thought to begin with (i have plenty of Jewish Uncles to know this),  but you mention the words farrakhan and apartheid and israel in the same paragraph by the mentor of the demo candidate you'll get the bedridden and the infirm to crawl to the polls to vote for McCain to beat this guy.  So there goes one key swing state that was going to be hard to get. THe Jewish vote except for the upper west side and hollywood fpr the demos will be eviscerated to the extent that it  matters in any other swing state.

Now add in the effect of the legion of ads prominently figuring michelle and wright and you have given all those with the slightest racist tendencies an easy out to vote for the other guy. This ignores the many, many millions of voters who are not the least bit racist and don't like guilt by association but who see a guy flying on the wings of eloquence and a gossamer thin record with some very weird associates/mentors/spiritual guides. If the demos are suicidal, they go with Obama. Unfortunately at this late date their alternative is not so popular also. But the dems who were so quick to turn their backs on clinton and subject her to unfair vitriol akin to the limbaugh attacks may now regret it. Btw I am a McCain supporter and wouldn't vote for either, my first republican vote in 45 years. So please don 't accuse me of being a hillary spinster etc.

roidubouloi-

You write: "Great theory Joseph Cuomo, but not what is actually happening out in the political world. . . . The idea that this event is going to change the race in any profound way is just wrong and events are already starting to demonstrate that this is the case."

Please see my response above to lymon, which, for your convenience, I'll repeat here:

My point on this thread is not that this story will get any traction, so as to affect the outcome of a very heated primary battle. My point is that Obama's connection to Rev. Wright is cause for concern.

To put it another way, in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan associated himself with religious figures such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Tim LaHaye, it was, to say the least, cause for concern. And I remember many of us to Reagan's left (including me) sounding the alarm about the lunatic rhethoric and the lunatic theology of these preachers.

Well, Obama's association with Rev. Wright and his theology is at least as troubling, at least as alarming, as Reagan's association with Falwell, Robertson, LaHaye, and their theology, if not more so--in that Obama's association with Wright is more intimate: Obama was married by Wright, his two daughters were baptized by Wright, the title of Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, was taken from a sermon by Wright, and the two men have been tied to each other for some twenty years.

And not to acknowledge this fact seems a gross denial of reality.

And the still-unanswered question is why Wright would engage in this performance when he *must* know the potential negative effect of his sermon on Obama's campaign.

jfeder says, in predicting Obama's loss of the general:

"Btw I am a McCain supporter and wouldn't vote for either, my first republican vote in 45 years."

On behalf of the Democratic party, I thank you for your tender concern.  Can you spell "disinformation?"  This is a bit like David Brooks giving advice to the Dems.  You can be pretty sure that whatever he tells us would be in our best interests, it won't be.  Obama is going to get the nomination and then beat McCain by at least 1 million votes in the general.  This Wright stuff is nonsense.  In a very perverse way, it is a good thing because the Republicans will use it to pander to their base and kid themselves that they are running a campaign.  

Ironyroad, Wright is a minister.  Obama is not his primary concern.  He no doubt believes the things he says and believes that he is saying what God wants him to say.  He is a religious leader, not a politician.  That is a big piece of why this will not in the end matter very much.

Mr. Cuomo, I and most people will not give a hoot about this.  It is not "troubling."  It is ridiculous.  If Reagan's association with Falwell, Robertson, et alia were genuinely theological, no one would have given a damn about that either.  It is precisely because they are political figures and Reagan's association with them was, in its essence, political that it mattered.  The were political associates, not his ministers or spiritual advisers.  People didn't even care that Nancy was consulting a ouiji board and giving Ronnie advice on what she "learned" there..

With all due respect, you are inventing your own reality.

roidubouloi-

You write: "If Reagan's association with Falwell, Robertson, et alia were genuinely theological, no one would have given a damn about that either."

Well, roidubouloi, in 1984 I produced a documentary (which aired on NPR stations in this country, on the CBC in Canada, and ABC in Australia) which detailed the instances in which Reagan discussed, with friends and preachers and acquaintances, dispensationalist theology and eschatology ; that is, the instances in which RWR discussed the theology and eschatology of Falwell, Robertson, LaHaye, et al.

In that same year, as it happens, I also debated Jerry Falwell on the subject for an hour, live on CNN.

And I can tell you with some degree of certainty that one of the reasons, perhaps the key reason, that the right wing televangelists of the 1980s flocked to Ronald Reagan is that he was a man who talked the dispensationalist talk--even if, during the course of his presidency, he didn't actually deliver anything real, in political terms, to that constituency.

Which is to say, it may be impossible to know what is in a man's heart--it may be impossible to know whether Reagan actually believed in dispensationalist theology; it may be impossible to know whether Obama believes in Liberation Theology.

But for you to make the claim that Obama's tie to Rev. Wright is somehow less relevant, less troubling, less alarming precisely because it is, as you suggest, "genuinely theological"--especially when the theology in question is demonstrably deluded and irrational--to make this claim, roidubouloi, seems, with all due respect, rather irrational in itself.

"Ironyroad, Wright is a minister.  Obama is not his primary concern.  He no doubt believes the things he says and believes that he is saying what God wants him to say.  He is a religious leader, not a politician.  That is a big piece of why this will not in the end matter very much."

I hope so, roi.  However, he's not *only* a minister.  He is (was) a member of Obama's spiritual affairs advisory group.  That means he wants the candidate, to whose campaign he has presumably voluntarily attached himself, to win.  Therefore, I find it odd that Wright would assume -- if he did -- that the kind of black conspiracy-theory polemic he gave vent to would not, at least potentially, do a lot of harm to the very candidate whose campaign he presumably -- see the foregoing -- supports.

It's an interesting comparison with Power.  For me, I wish Obama had stuck with Power and reminded the Clinton campaign of the "Ken Starr" slur.  And I wish he'd thought about Wright's loose-cannon propensities earlier.

Relevant to whom, Mr. Cuomo?  To you perhaps.  I don't happen to believe, as a matter of political reality, that it is going to end up being relevant to many people, as indeed Reagan's ties to these religious figures was only relevant for the people who already had a strong ideological position with respect to him, in one direction or the other.  The left found the ties abhorrent.  The right found them a further indication of Reagan's "election."

You want me to take this seriously as some indication of Obama's character?  Sorry, I personally find that notion ridiculous because there is not a shred of evidence that Obama's ideas on these matters are a reflection of Wright's.  Just the reverse.  I find it perfectly plausible that Obama could respond to Wright's ideas about Jesus and the role of faith in life while completely mentally dismissing his more political ideas.  This is a commonplace.  We pay attention to people when we respond to what we say and just ignore the parts to which we don't respond.  To the extent that Obama is able to take the good from Rev. Wright and ignore the rest is very much to his credit.  It says he thinks for himself and takes good ideas where he finds them without having to be anyone's slavish follower, in theology or ideology.

Ironyroad, I just don't think Wright thinks about the political impact he may have on Obama.  He is simply not political in that way.  It probably never crosses his mind, or if it does he considers it unworthy to take it into account when he is doing "God's work."

Obama is in trouble over the Wright outing because his answers to questions concerning his relationship with the minister are ambiguous at best and his denunciations of the reverend's crackpot statements appear contrived and politically expedient.  This is all the more magnified by Obama coming across as a charming, well-spoken man of mystery selling us hope and change.  Since this is an excruciatingly long campaign, he just may right himself, but for now, he has stumbled like Hillary did when questioned about driver's licenses for illegals.  Playing gotcha may be unfair, but that's what presidential campaigns have come down to.

roidubouloi-

I would like to make this my last post on this thread, especially as I am getting bored with it, bored with responding to posters when it is evident that they have not read what I have said.

So I will be brief.

You apparently believe, roidubouloi, that I am on some hobby horse here, trying to bring down Obama with what you perceive to be a bogus argument.

Well let me be clear (even if I have already been clear, even if I have already said these things before):  I like Obama, roidubouloi, I have been moved by his words, I voted for him in the NYS primary, I was on the verge of making what would be for me a sizeable contribution to his campaign, but his long and intimate history with Rev. Wright has made me draw back, it has made me flinch, it has made me reconsider my support.

Now, whether or not there are millions of others in this country who feel the same way, who have drawn back, or will draw back, will flinch, will reconsider their support of Obama, after hearing of his long and intimate connection to Rev. Wright--after seeing Rev. Wright ranting like a lunatic, again and again and again on millions of TV screens, coast to coast--well, roidubouloi, neither you nor I can reliably predict this either way, neither you nor I can see into the future, neither you nor I can possibly know now who will win the general in the fall.

So why don't we just agree to disagree on the subject, and leave it there.

As another poster said, my support for Obama might blind me to how this will play out, but I think this will only be a problem for Obama against Clinton because people are much more concerned about tone than substance.  

Are there any "crackpot" comments from Wright for which it isn't easy to find equivalents on the right?  "God Damn America?"  Are you kidding? You will hear that same sentiment from pastors regarding gay marriage and abortion every weekend.  (Maybe slightly different verbiage - but the same sentiment).  

9/11 is punishment for something the United States did?  I'm fairly certain there are pastors and ministers that said this same thing from the right.  Didn't Falwell say exactly that?  

There are a lot of white and black people who will understand this fire and brimstone from preachers.  I think Obama should make a speech about the Wright comments.  But before his speech starts he should  play clip after clip of white pastors making incendiary comments.  He might even be able to find some with politicians in the audience.  

The more I think about it, the more I think he can get out in front of this.  But he has to do it quickly and he has to do it in a way that make religious whites identify with him.  It pains me to say this, since I'd rather see politicians avoid the subject of religion altogether.      

It would be helpful to sort out Wright's views and understand exactly which of those views are "deplorable" or crazy or disturbing.  (Obama's statement, while strong, is not very helpful here.)  Strong condemnation of American social ills or American acts of war?  The view that we live in a racist society that systematically harms blacks through policies such as the war on drugs?  The view that Obama knows what it means to be a black person and Hillary doesn't?  The view that America is ruled by its wealth?  The view that there is stark inequality across the globe and that America owes its high standard of living in part to the low standard of living in the third world?  

The above are all characteristic of the political outlook of a left-wing person, which Wright clearly is, and many of them are, in fact, perfectly plausible.

Next up are Wright's views on Israel, which strike me as right out of Jimmy Carter's playbook and, while wrong and deplorable in my view, are hardly shocking.  Indeed, these views, which Obama does not share, have become, unfortunately, commonplace among many -- even many liberal Jews.  In the past, I have made the argument that such views betray a latent antisemitism, and I hold to that.  But it is latent, and those who voice such views do not necessarily consciously harbor antisemitic attitudes and, indeed, they typically strongly disclaim such attitudes.  In short, one such as Obama who does not share these views about Israel is hardly suspect for having a close friend who does share them.  Ralph Nader, for example, whom I hate with every pore of my being, made many close friends over the years I admire.

Then there is his 9/11 talk -- which would have been put under the "idiocy watch" at TNR when the magazine had that feature -- the view that basically 9/11 was in part brought on by American policies.  While this, of course, is true in a technical sense -- they don't hate us for our freedom -- its implications are wrong -- e.g., that America should abandon its support for Israel.  Once again, we're in the land of pretty commonplace left-wing attitudes.

The two most troubling aspects to me about Wright that I've heard is that he evidently holds admiration for Louis Farrakhan, which I can't abide, and has said that "we started AIDS" in a sermon.  This has been interpreted to mean that Wright buys the conspiracy theory that the U.S. deliberately started the AIDS outbreak.  I'm not sure about that -- the three words have been quoted out of context and I can't find more discussion about it elsewhere on the web -- but it's hard to know what else he would have in mind.  What do these things have to do with Obama?  Well, he has famously rejected and denounced Farrakhan, and we're starting to get into double guilt-by-association here.  It is not clear at all that Wright shares Farrakhan's antisemitic views.  We know he doesn't share his religious views!  Old news.  The AIDS thing needs more context and investigation.  Is this something Wright has said repeatedly?  What does he mean?  Has Obama ever heard him say such a thing?  This is really the only off-the-charts nutso view I've heard that Wright holds.  (By the way, it pales in comparison to the nutso views of the likes of Hagee or Pat Robertson, whose toxic hatred is right there with Farrakhan's.  Yet, McCain's embrace of that type is somehow more acceptable.)

The remaining shockers amount to rhetorical hyperbole -- "God damn America" for the bad things it does, and so on.

My sense is that we're not, as Obama says, getting a well-rounded view of Wright with these recent clips, which, of course, are chosen and cut for shock value.  I doubt that his sermons are always or even usually so abrasive or angry.  They would not have inspired Obama if they were and Wright would not have inspired Obama's close friendship if Wright were merely a left-wing borderline crackpot.  Moreover, it's perfectly plausible that Obama has never heard the AIDS thing -- there appears to be only one recorded instance of it that I can find -- and it's perfectly plausible that Obama has never heard Wright utter the words "God damn America," which I'm sure he would have taken issue with.

Obama has acknowledged the questions about Wright, has defended his friendship with him, has endeavored to explain that these clips are not typical of him, and that the views contained in them are far from his own -- that they represent a somewhat unreformed attitude born in the 60s which he simply does not share not having come of intellectual age in that time.  What he does share is Wright's evident commitment to a socially "activist" spirituality -- one that brings together faith and action in the community to make it better.  That view is nearly beyond reproach and is the polar opposite of the religious right, which tells its followers that God wants you to be rich, not to mention that unrepetent gays and Jews and Catholics and anyone else who disagrees is going straight to Hell when they die.  In my view, unlike McCain, who has to whore himself out to hate-mongers, Obama's loyalty and his honesty in this matter to date are admirable.

That's fine Joseph Cuomo.  My political prediction, rooted in my own political experience, is that this has to be dealt with, as sirhc notes above, but I don't think it is going to end up changing many minds.  

As with my own posts, it is not always clear whether someone is making an argument about what is, what they think ought to be, or confusing the two.

"I'm not prepared to render judgment on that here."

Crowley, you pompous son of a bitch, you and your Plank cohorts always seem prepared enough to render judgment on Hillary.

"'It makes me think it's going to be at least another generation before we see a black man elected president.' If Obama can prove him wrong then he really may be a world-historical figure."

Oh, I see, then, electing Obama really is about proving a point.  Crowley, you're not only an S.O.B. but a fatuous one at that!

Joe,

I understand you're tired of arguing, and I will not belabor the point.  I also understand that you are sincerely troubled by Wright's association with Liberation Theology, Barack's association with Wright, and the inklings you find in his rhetoric of what you believe to be the fundamental philosophical assumptions of Liberation Theology.  One last comment and I'll leave it alone.

"Some people see the world as it is and say why?

I see the world as it could be, and say why not?"

Robert Kennedy quoting George Bernard Shaw, time and time again, in his insurgent campaign of 1968.  Were they both Liberation Theologists?  They were holding up a vision of a world that is not, but that could be, and Robert Kennedy was saying it was in our power to make it so.  As did Buddha with his eightfold path, the writers of the Bhagavad Gita with their description of the Karma Yogin, Jesus Christ with the Sermon on the Mount and other sermons, Gandhi in developing the practice of Satyagraha and King with Civil Disobedience.   Gustavo Gutierrez doesn't own the franchise on this theory of change.  It is as old as wisdom itself.  I respect your scholarship and your concerns, but what Barack says when he talks about hope and change, and places them squarely and inarguably in the mainstream of American History (The founding, the abolitionist movement and the Civil War, the westward migration, the movement for women's sufferage and labor rights, the struggle to overcome the Depression and the fight against Fascism, and the civil rights and anti-war movements of the sixites)....is as american and as familar as apple pie.  It resonates deeply with me, and like I said, I don't know shit about Liberation Theology.   I don't think he intends to secretly foment some American version of the Sandinista Revolution, Joe, I really don't.

I think his antecedents are Martin and Bobby, not Daniel Ortega.  Wright notwithstanding.

But keep your eyes and ears open, maybe I'm wrong.

Pccostello,

This thread may be played out, and you may have moved on to new venues of conversation and contention, but nonetheless, I will try to explain why I say that most African Americans I know know exactly what Barack Obama needs to do to get elected, and thay are cool with it.

Back when the big question going around about Barack was, "Is he Black enough?" (and he had, I would like to poiint out, 25-30 percent of the black vote at that hime.  This was not part of his original base.  As I can attest to because I was spending all of my time trying to advocate  his cause with my black friends and co-workers.  It was lonely work.) somebody floated the idea that the reason Barack Obama could not only be considered for the Presidency, but more importantly, consider himself for the Presidency with such ease, was the fact that he was not descended from slaves.  (He was, actually descended from slave holders, with gives this a whole other dimension)

Only a few black men have reached the level of acceptance with such a consensus of people throughout the country that they were considered for the Presidency.  Colin Powell, as far as I know, and Barack Obama.  Both descendents of free people, Powell from Jamaicans and Barack from Africans and whites.  They do not bear on their historical memories and their own direct personal understanding of the world the stigma of slavery.  (as somewhat seperate from "personal experience")

Perhaps.  But for whatever reason the consensus among all the African -Americans I know (and I hasten to point out that although I work in an office, it is a state office and staffed primarily by working class people, myself included.  Most people went to a state teacher' s college somewhere and came here young and stayed 'cause it was an easy enough job, occasionally gratifying,  had pretty good benefits and payed the bills.  Or at least half the bills for folks in  a relationship).....the consensus has been (up until the night of the Iowa caucuses) that (a) white people won't vote for him (so he can't be elected) and (b) if by some miracle they did, somebody would shoot him.  (A) fell on the night of the Iowa cacuses and (b) has been temporily set aside.  Hope rules.  But it is delicate.

My friend Rise has alway loved Barack and wished him well, but she thought he was doomed and tried to cushion my inevitable disappointment when he failed.  This country, she said, is never gonna elect a black man President.  And she was an Obama supporter.

Tyrone got hopeful for a minute, when he heard parts of the Selma sermon, but when he talked to his friends, they all agreed that Barack was hopeless, and besides, what's he gonna do for the black man?, and backed off.  Edwards was gonna be the guy.  He's the white guy, right, the white, anglo-saxon, protestant, straight, male....right?  Go look at a hiistory book, son, and tell me what the last 40 some presidents have looked like?  Barack Obama?  Barack Hussein Obama?  Daddy from where? ...from Africa.  Sure thing.  Quit dreaming.

Quit hoping.

Day after the Iowa caucuses, Tyrone was over at my desk, sort of awe-struck, saying "If my grandma could have lived to see this day"....over and over, shaking his head.   But smiling.

Hope.

It isn't about any government program that he's gonna give specially for black people.  It isn't about any law he passes or court rulings that judges he appoints could produce.  (Although those things are important.)    It's about the sheer fact that somebody who looks like, talks like, moves like and could be as motherfucking cool as Barack Obama is, could become the most powerful man in the world.

That is, in and of itself, revolutionary.

But people who have survived kidnaping and slavery and oppression up until about nineteen seventy something are practical and pragmatic.  They know he has to be the President of ALL the people, and has to run and govern that way, or he cannot be the President.  He can't just be the President of Black People.  That's Jesse Jackson, God bless him, with a Harvard degree and an interesting back story, that's not President of the United States.  (On how he deals with Wright, and the likelihood that Barack will put some kind of distance between the two of them, some folks will see it as a necessary political move tactically and some will see it as necessary strategically, but every will be interested in how he does it.)  

If white people don't vote for him, he can't win.  That's the trick.  To be true to himself and also get 51% (at least) of everybody in America to become President.

Tall order.  But I can report, as of now, the African Americans that I know are universally hoping and praying for him.  If he can do this, than everything changes.  More than laws change.  Reallity changes.  What reality looks like.  Like Tyrone says,

A black man will be the most powerful man in the world.  

And not just a black man, but Barack Obama.

How fucking cool is that?

And when Tyrone tell his son and Rise tells her grandson that they can grow up to anything they want to be, for the first time in the history of their family, they can be telling the truth.

And, more remarkable than that, it may be first time in the history of their family that that was said by parent to child.   So, yeah, if Barack succeeds in this....everything changes.  And Reverend Wright, God love him, is wrong about America.  Barack is trying to prove his old friend wrong.

That's what I mean to say,  Pccostello.

van,

Thanks for the interesting and deeply felt reply. I was just lintening to two black women on tv talking about how Wright is right. My thought is that Wright's rhetoric has to be rejected by most African-Americans before black candidates can really be seen as candidates with broad appeal across the ethnic spectrum. A candidate can't win state-wide or national ofice without doing that. Obama has taken some major steps in that direction. But the mainstream of the African-American politcal community has to be on board with rejecting Wright--and even then there is no guarantee for Obama, just as there is no guarantee for anyone else. But I think it has to be a genuine rejection of Wright beyond Obama. I am not sure we are there yet.

Spin number 126 pccostello.  Your reasons change by the minute.  Keep on turning.  Now it is not a matter of what Obama does, but what the whole African American community does.  So, of course, he cannot possibly win.

Keep up the good work pc.   You are one of the most endlessly inventive spinners I have seen in here.  The day you say something I actually find trenchant, let alone persuasive, I will be sure to let you know.  Really, I will.

Pc....

Ninety percent of blacks are voting for Barack Obama everywhere he goes.  That is "most" African Americans rejecting Wright.  The essense of Obama is hope and inclusion.  A vote for Obama is, by definition, a vote for inclusion and diversity and explicit faith in the American demoracy.  That's what voting is, affirming hope.  The revolution you want is already happening.

Is roidubouloi, god forbid, right?   Are you moving the goal posts again?  And you say that you're not affiliated with Hillary's campaign?  You sure know her MO.

vanwurs said:

That is "most" African Americans rejecting Wright.  

I don't think that is true at all, because in every primay up to now, Wright has been a non-issue - they have not had to offer any opinion beyond "Who's Wright?"  Now that Wright is an issue, they have to decide if they agree more with Wright or more with Obama.

Now that Obama is starting to distance himself from Wright, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out in the black community.  If you're a black that pretty much agrees with Wright (or even a white liberal that agrees with Wright) and Obama is saying he disagrees, or rejects, or condemns, or whatever he's going to end up doing with Wright, aren't a lof of blacks (at least the ones that agree with Wright, and I have no idea if that's 1% or 99% of blacks) going to see this as a betrayal by Obama?  Or they might just see it as one more affirmation of how whitey is trying to destroy all blacks, so they should redouble their efforts on behalf of Obama?  

This story has a hundred possible outcomes.  It's possible that Obama could turn this whole thing into something very good for him AND good for America, or it's possible that this could lead to an explosion of all kinds of name calling from all directions.  We'll just have to wait and see, and try to keep whatever discussions that do come up on this subject as civil as possible (on all sides).

Thanks all for the illuminating discussion about Liberation Theology. Despite my being a lifelong worshipping Christian in a liberal Protestant denomination, I've not spent much time exploring liberation theology in a systematic way *as theory.* But I can say that among conservatives - not radical right conservatives - Liberation Theology meant only one thing: communism, for its association with Marxist theory of class struggle and violent revolution (Sandanistas for example). Simplistic I grant you, and not very literate, but there you are. That was America then. For many folks still alive today, including relatively early boomers like myself, the term has resonance, as well as for people who still recall - rawly - the controversies and political actions that accompanied the Vietnam War.

Then there was Black Power, the Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, all associated with violence including active armed violence.

I could go on, but only add that in the fall campaign there will be many strata of consciousness, awareness and memory, that have nothing to do with Barack Obama, but could, if expertly manipulated, add up to a lot of irrational but, nevertheless, "relevant" debate.

I'm a real pessimist where politics is concerned because I too many times have I seen the utterly irrational engulf rational and level minded thinking and feeling, as Election Day approaches.

Not good. Not good at all for Obama. Please god this isn't his swift-boat. We'll see how it shakes out. I'm hoping his message doesn't fall on this gangrene rock.

Mike - your post is exactly right, but I can't help but feel a certain double standard is being applied here. Surely, Republican's have had endorsements and sought favour with religious characters that held extreme views? The history is there, we don't need to go over it.

The standard response to that question has been: "Yea, but that's different, he's Obama's pastor."

Granted, that  has a certain validity to it. Nevertheless, that line of enquiry leads us down a very McCarthyite road.

Are people to investigate and probe their pastors views on politics and everything from HIV to Climate Change? What has my pastor said on these issues when I wasn't there? Should I sit him down and grill him on his views on China hosting the Olympics?

And yea, sure the guy said some stupid things, and is clearly ignorant but do you really want to invite the pastor into the executive?

I mean superstition breeds ignorance anyway. It's a slippery slope. Be careful.

Also, I was about to go on a rant about how this controversy could only happen in America but there's a tradition of pastors talking bollox in England, as well all know.

Which leads me to the next question: Why is this a protestant phenomenon?

Maybe there's something in hiding behind ritual and ceremony -The Feast of the Assumption doesn't lend itself well to identity politics.  

van,

what moving the goal posts? i have no idea what roid is talking about. what i said i stand with, and it is already an emerging theme in the media commentary. wright is an ugly version of identity politcs, victimization as strategy, and paranoia. but i hear a lot of defenses of wright. to the extent that continues--that there is a defense of wright's point of view--it ain't going to work out well for obama. but have it as you like it.

roid,

try to do better than ad hominems. obama has done best with whites where racial politics are minimal because there are few blacks and lots of republicans (e.g. Iowa, Wyoming). To the extent that racial issues become an issue, it is bad for obama. get it now?

just back from a weekend away. This is a terrific thread! Mike, excellent post. No apologies or clarifications needed. JosephCuomo, I commend you for a thorough and thoughtful analysis of Liberation Theology. It is all new to me and answers a lot of questions about what i find so darn troubling about Obama and the whole movement. I really appreciate it and look forward to more of it in the future.

Yes pccostello, I am well aware that to the extent that racial issues become an issue it is bad for Obama.  That is the point I have made repeatedly with regard to Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary's race-baiting.  It is intended to say to working class whites that Obama is someone who has taken from them by getting where he is because of his race.  Quite calculated and nasty.  I fully expect the Republicans to play to race fear and anger in any way they can.  Why wouldn't they?  It has been a dominant part of Republican tactics since the '60s and is largely responsible for the shift of the South into the Republican party.  It is disgraceful, however, to see Hillary, a so-called Democrat, engage in this behavior.

Forgive me for not taking seriously your 101 versions of why this, that or the other particular of what WRight said or didn't or when or what it means.  I just don't think politics works that way.  Some wonkish types may dissect and dissect.  The rest of the public has to be persuaded that Obama sincerely does not share Wright's view about these things and sincerely does believe the things he Obama says.  He has to do that successfully and it is not to be ignored, but if he does this, I don't believe that Wright will have much impact, certainly not on the Democratic nomination and not likely in the general either.

If your overall point is actually that a black man cannot be elected president of the United States unless he runs for the Republican party so that the Republican party cannot engage in race-baiting, I think you are wrong.  It is a close call, but I believe that there are a couple of post-boomer generations who have no problem with that, the bulk of the older generation that wouldn't vote for a black wouldn't vote for a Democrat (certainly not a woman) anyway.  So, it is a wash.

Your argument that Obama does well where there are few blacks and lots of Republicans is bizarrely counter-factual, although it isn't ad hominem.  Obama has done well throughout the south and even in Texas where Hillary just managed to squeak it out.  You can pretty much chalk up Hillary's victories to the places where the Clinton brand is strong, but it's wearing thin which is why she is losing and going to lose.  The current popular vote margin for Obama, without the ridiculous case of MI where he polls even with her, is 519,000 votes.  There is not a snowballs chance in hell that Hillary can cover more than 200,000 of that in the remaining primaries.

And Pccostello..... one more thing.

You say Barack has to get right with the "Black Leaders".  I don't think is it works like that anymore.  I think it's the old guard black leaders that need to get right with Barack.  I think he's kind of the Godfather now (unfortune analogy, but it is 11:00 at night and nobody should be reading this...so..)and even though he wears his authority lightly, he still, at this point in time, has it.  Figure out what John Lewis was talking about and you will see the dynamic.  It usually isn't angry or resentful, it just acknowledges the history and accepts it.  This is, John Lewis said, what my whole life's work has been about, I cannot reject it now, even for the deepest of personal loyalty.   Tavis Smiley came round, after resisting for nearly a year.   Barack is pretty much the de-facto leadership, at least for the moment.   Black folks know what Barack Obama has to do get elected President.  And they're cool with it.

I don't believe Obama when he says that he only became aware of Wright's radical views recently.  He's known about Wright for a long time but in order to placate the constinuency who follows Wright and not be called an Uncle Tom, he's had to declare that Wright is a "good friend".  When Wright's true views started to become publicized, Obama began his strategy of backtracking.  First he said it's not good to "cherry pick" comments and ignore the totality of his minister's message.  Soon Obama mildly stated that he doesn't agree with ALL of Wright's comments but can't reject him entirely.  When all the horrendous Wright comments were plastered all over YouTube, Obama was forced to publicly reject Wright's message.  But notice how he puts it--he doesn't say he denounces Wright himself--only that he rejects his views.  He also doesn't say that he 's leaving the church but notes only that Wright is now retiring and that he looks forward to dealing with the new minister.  Note that Obama doesn't discuss the views of the new minister who was quoted the other day in a CNN interview basically praising Wright.  This whole issue is not going to go away and I hope Hillary hammers him on it.  Wright propagates a cult of victimization and Obama not only must reject his words but resign from this church of militants.  If he fails to do so, it could cost him the election.  

THis is the best thread ever. I myself have the weird feeling this will not be a bad thing. I think he's handling it so incredibly well - this is being vetted x 1000 - that what it will do is solidify his Christian bona fides to those who care, show that he really is able to disagree with people politely, and that he has rock solid integrity. Hillary would be burning Wright in effigy right now, so ruled by fear is she. The generational thing really hits home - and is completely consistent with everything he's always said. Smears stick only when they relate to something you kind of already thought about a person. Kerry - sorry - did seem like the kind of guy who might fabricate war-hero-ness, for example. There was some story that he threw his medal away in a very public protest against the war, but it turned out to be some other guy's medal, and he let people think it was his. But the idea that Obama believes in vilifying white people or even rich people, or pitting us against each other in any way, is completely insane. I don't see it sticking, and he's handling it perfectly.

droid--

yeah, that's a good line--it is Cinton's fault that Wright has been videotaping and selling racist speeches for years and that Obama has been listening to him for 2 decades without knowing what he was saying. makes sense to me.

I'm very fond of most things American; but given the immense power of the Presidency it would be  reassuring to many foreigners like me if the voters in November, and at every subsequent election, could be relied upon  to put somebody in office, whether from the right or the left, who does not hold primitive religious views. Such views, translated into policies and actions, have a dangerously high level of influence in many places at the moment, and America should not be contributing to the problem.( By the way, Peretz is a prince, and  TNR on line is indispensable.)

eweiss-

You write: "JosephCuomo, I commend you for a thorough and thoughtful analysis of Liberation Theology. It is all new to me and answers a lot of questions about what i find so darn troubling about Obama and the whole movement. I really appreciate it and look forward to more of it in the future."

Thanks for the kind words, eweiss.

______________________________________________________________________________

tomeg-

You write: "Thanks all for the illuminating discussion about Liberation Theology.  . . .among conservatives - not radical right conservatives - Liberation Theology meant only one thing: communism, for its association with Marxist theory of class struggle and violent revolution (Sandanistas for example). Simplistic I grant you, and not very literate, but there you are."

Your take on Liberation Theology is not all that far off the mark, tomeg. Gutierrez and Cardenal and others within that movement have an avowed sympathy for the theories of Marx, and often employ those theories in their writings.

This post by Mike Crowley is right on target - most of my fellow white middle-class middle-aged Americans struggle to reconcile Obama's presentation with the facts of his close ties to Wright, and do not begin to understand the complexities of race that are obvious to our black neighbors.  I'm inclined to accept Obama's strong statement denouncing the views expressed by Rev Wright, but a lot of my white friends and neighbors will not.  I will continue to support Obama for president, but his association with Wright has done a lot of damage.

Neil

roi - great phrase "cultural puzzle."  

The reasoning here is that anything but white American culture is "other", alien and certainly any critiques by that "other" are treason, to be feared, shut down.  This whole process is unconscious in most people, not even implemented with malics. We've all been socialized, no use getting overly huffy about it. Let's just move on.  We all had the same crap seep into our unconscious, every race, class, gender.  There's the top dogs and the underdogs. That's normal.  But we aren't entitled to just hang on to that, we're required to let go of it actually.

African American culture, history, idiom, semantics, are all every bit as American as white culture, history, idiom, semantics.  

I don't think that everyone speaking from the same exact page and perspective of the American experience is the ideal. The ideal is a culturally encougared willingness to reach across difference with humility and respect - and be able to take critiques to EACH OTHER without retreating behind too

much name calling and hurts (this is a perfect example of a stupid overreaction). Pointless, overt ignorgance and ugliness should  be dispatched dispassionatley, ala George Allen.  

But the rest is coming out anyway, let's just talk openly to each other and grow up as a culture a little bit.  I said this is the ideal, not what it is or even can be.  But we can do better.

Speaking to this honestly head on is the way for Obama to triumph over this.  He must show spine, stop dancing to other people's tunes.  He has nothing to apologize for.  With all due respect, Florida will not be in the Dem column no matter what and if a little cultural difference, history, nuance is too much for a voter block to imagine or tolerate, then they are free to vote for someone else.  The only thing that will win this election for Obama is for him to be 100% himself and to ask us all to move forward, kicking and screaming yes, but foward we should go.  

Our kids are already miles ahead of us in this conversation. Soon it will be time to let go and give them the floor.

Pccostello says

"droid--

yeah, that's a good line--it is Cinton's fault that Wright has been videotaping and selling racist speeches for years and that Obama has been listening to him for 2 decades without knowing what he was saying. makes sense to me."

Was that written in English?  I haven't the foggiest idea what you are talking about or even what you are referring to.

Mr. Cuomo,

It was surely only a matter of time until someone made the claim that Wright's sermons prove that Obama is really a communist.  Isn't that what all the complainers really want to say?

Thank you for your candor.  It puts the whole McCarythite spectacle in proper perspective.

"But I do worry that this lays bare a very grim truth: That even middle-class black American culture is more angry and alienated than most whites understand" = DUH!!!!!!!

Crowley, step away from the computer and head to the pub for St. Patty's Day. This is obviously too much for you to handle. The media narrative has a shelf-life of less than five days. This will have passed on - except for the Glenn Becks of the world - before the end of the week. And what nonsense it is. McCain, lifetime Episcopalian and now Baptist, goes and kisses the ring of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, two religious leaders that placed the blame for 9/11 on America's lack of virtue, and he pays no political price? Someone explain the difference, please? I'm sure the Clinton partisans are praying that Obama implodes and they can win by default, but it's not bloody likely. Ruined by a few sermons of his minister? Try again.

Yes, I'll agree to a certain point mcgumbleton.

But I'd add that:

a) Every middle class black person is not angry - robbing people of the option of individuality is just not in me - ex: Gloria Steinem and her ilk make me sick rather than inspire me: an old white broad. No wonder Ralph Ellison hated to be called a a black writer - how claustrophobic can you get?

b) Let's go back to the source - W.E. DuBois, a consumate American, confidant of Abraham Lincoln, a masterful public intellectual, writer, advocate. DuBois taught us about the African America of dual consciousness over 100 years ago. I can relate to that concept.  So can many of us.  It allows us to move beyond one dimensional categories like "ANGRY BLACK MIDDLE CLASS" that might tell part of a story, but certainly not all of it.  

Just because someone is angry doesn't mean you need to judge it or be afraid of it, listenting works.  More people tend to respond positively, with less defensiveness, when listened to. It also doesn't mean they aren't patriotic or don't love their country.  People are certainly allowed to be dispirited and angry, to try and hold America accountable for its promise, despite it all.  We should all try harder to remember the assumptions of privledge that go in to these sorts of controversies.

This isn't to say it doesn't go both ways - I can't say how someone of Reverand Wright's background can go about making himself better understood across cultures, perhaps to reach out and have a conversation and ask for change in addition to being angry.  I can't say because I wasn't offended by what he said, like I said I agreed with some of it.  

Everyone is so defensive, hackles up, assuming the worst about each other. I'm sick of it but I also see us growing as a culture through this, ugly as it is.  Welcome to someone else's reality.

WEB DuBois died in the Sixties at a very old age, but I don't think he was old enough to be a confidant of Lincoln.  

Sirhc - oops, I meant Frederick Douglas - I should not blog before coffee in the morning on a Monday! Thank you!

Wandreycer1, my deepest apologies - I did not mean to imply judgement against anyone for their anger. Far from it. I have watched these "offensive" videos from the Rev Wright and I really don't get what all the fuss is about. He is a very impassioned speaker, he raises some extremely valid issues, his congregation was in deep agreement with him. Check, Check, Check. I can't even begin to explain how much I am in violent agreement with you on everything you said, and I certianly did not mean to paint an entire group of people with one brush. So I'm sorry for that.

I just thought it was naive of Mr Crowley [and other "White Liberals"] to be shocked at the notion that "middle class Black America" might be angry and have something to be angry about. As if prejudice and/or racism ends once you've achieved a certain salary level or education level or status level. One can be at the pinnacle of your career, make enormous amounts of money, and, if you are Black, still get pulled over by a cop for driving a large Mercedes. So why wouldn't "middle class Black America" resonate to what Rev Wright is saying.

I only meant "duh" in that sense that the only reason "White people" don't get it/ might be shocked is because they haven't been and don't ever pay attention. It's like Homer Simpson saying "there's a 6 AM too???"

And, in general, if you've been paying attention these last 7 years how can you not be angry. I was reading about the melt down of our financial markets today - directly due to the policies and mismanagement of our current White House occupant - and that same occupant refuses to do anything about it for anyone - niether the large corporations that are going under and dragging our entire financial system with them, nor the people who have been utterly screwed and are losing their homes, pensions, etc - and I get so angry I have to put the paper down and cool down or else I'll pummel the next person walking by.

FWIW, I don't think this has to hurt him like "White Liberals" are all up in arms about. People are deeply hurting. If he can speak to that pain - in the same a certain other Clinton was able to back in 92 when Gennifer Flowers, Draft-dodging, and all that other shit was hitting fan at the start of the primaries - everyone of all stripes will vote for him regardless of anything.

Amen, mcgumbleton,

I got your point the first time, but I very much appreciate your thoughtful and articulate elaboration.

There is a 6 AM too?