The Wright Stuff
Like some kind of elaborate striptease, the McCain campaign, having already flashed its Ayers, is now hinting that they’ll show us the full Wright. I hope they get on with it already!
But I find the idea that they’ve been holding back from this out of a sense of virtue a little non-credible. Rather, they presumably haven’t been talking about Jeremiah Wright because it’s not clear what they’re going to say about it. When Hillary Clinton brought this up, her main point was that (a) this was an electoral vulnerability that the Republicans would exploit and (b) Obama didn’t have a track-record in big-time politics that showed he could handle the attacks. Neither of those, however, can actually be the point of a McCain attack. With, say, Willie Horton, the point was that Dukakis was soft on crime. With Wright the point is . . . what? Maybe I just lack imagination. But McCain is paddling up river at this point, with everything we know about American politics suggesting that the deterioration of the economic situation makes it hard for him to win. At a minimum I would think that any spectacular campaign gambit would have to somehow connect to some point about the economic situation.
45 Responses to “The Wright Stuff”
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October 20th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
My grandmother is dead convinced that Wright indicates Obama is “anti-white” and if he becomes President, will give all of the white people’s jobs and money to blacks. That’s why she backs McCain … she daren’t put an anti-white in the White House.
Did I mention she has been a strong Democrat for as long as I live? Man the South gets me down sometimes.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Somebody was speculating that McCain was holding off on Wright b/c he was afraid of pissing off Colin Powell. Seemed kind of far-fetched at the time. A little closer fetched now.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
With, say, Willie Horton, the point was that Dukakis was soft on crime. With Wright the point is . . . what?
That Obama and Wright hate America, just like the terrorists?
October 20th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
John McCain will be responsible, whatever. The net will try to push msm to go back over Parsley and Hagee; Sarah Palin’s church and the nutcases that have addressed it.
Look it, John, you’ve got 2 weeks to demonstrate that you have not sold your soul; have some grace under fire will ya.
The rest is about voting day; the extreme right wing cannot figure out after the last eight years of disaster, why no one cares about Reverend Wright has said. Their chickens are coming home to roost, and all their dirty campaigning cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
How dare Obama hide his secret Muslim anti-Americanism underneath a black nationalist radical Christian anti-Americanism? It’s not fair.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
The gambit here would appear to be to see if they can get the MSM to discuss this. It’s almost like they want Meredith Viera to do a GMA segment describing how Team McCain really doesn’t WANT to play the Wright card, but thinks they might be forced to by the Obama campaign.
Maybe if they keep it up with this nonsense, they’ll get something like that. Stranger things have happened.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
With Wright the point is . . . what?
I’m picturing a McCain ad that opens with a tight close-up of Wright saying “God damn America!” and he just looks so angry and so black, so scary and so vengeful and dressed so foreign like some African witch doctor, and, again, so black, and…so angry…and…
I’m sorry, what was the question?
October 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Don’t make Johnny pull out the Whitey tape! He has it, he just think it would be dishonorable to use it, but if Obama forces him to by continuing to lead in the polls, well, he’ll have no choice.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
so McCain is going completely off the tracks and is now the Wright-wing candidate!
October 20th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
it’s an attempt to win a news cycle – in this case, by pushing stories about how McCain *might* play the Wright card. Then if they *do* play the Wright card, that’s another news cycle… Of course, at this point playing the news cycle game is fine I suppose, since they can’t really do anything else.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
What right said, at #2.
Besides, how could Hillary have claimed this as an electoral vulnerability if there’s no way to exploit it?
October 20th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I’m actually a bit surprised at this. Since we’ve been through the Wright gag before, I thought they were going to pull out all the stops and just point out, non-stop, that Obama was black. No subtlety. Just real crude, Stephen Douglas, miscegenation stuff.
There might be 2 or 3 voters out there who wouldn’t understand the implications of the Wright gag otherwise.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
The debates are over, so McCain doesn’t have to worry about being called out on this bullshit. Classic pussy move.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Uh, the point is to remind America that Obama wants to enslave the white race. Duh!!
October 20th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Classic pussy move.
If this election has made nothing else clear, it has proven that John McCain is an enormous pussy. From his cowed demeanor at the debates to his defensive pick of Sarah Palin, this guy has not in any way lived up to the image he had so carefully constructed of a tough-as-nails, mean S.O.B.
I guess it shouldn’t be all that surprising. Yeah, this is the guy who, when asked for the names of his squadron mates, gave his captors the starting O-line of the Green Bay Packers. That was shortly before he gave up as much real information as they wanted to know, and then tried to hang himself with his shirt.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
You use Wright to “prove” Obama hates America & is lol a “reverse racist” lol
October 20th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “At a minimum I would think that any spectacular campaign gambit would have to somehow connect to some point about the economic situation.”
—————-
Never underestimate the power of Republican Misdirection to distract the voters.
Whatever happened to that war in IRaq, by the way? How many soldiers have been killed?
October 20th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
The reason Wright hasn’t come up before is because the McCain and Obama campaigns are in a detente ensured by Mutually Assured Destruction if either side tries to play the “crazy pastor” card. McCain might try to bring up Wright out of desperation, like the supervillain pushing the “destroy earth” button, but that never ends well for the villain in those stories.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
With Wright the point is . . . what?
The point is the “kitchen sink” gambit.
To the extent that there’s any strategy to bringing up Wright at all, I think the plan is the same as it is with Ayers: trying to say that Obama is insufficiently jingoistic. With the added benefit of reminding people that Obama is black.
I doubt it will make much difference though. If someone thinks it’s incomprehensible and unconscionable for an elderly black man to be just a bit angry about America’s history of race relations, they’re probably voting for McCain already.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
When Hillary Clinton brought this up, her main point was that (a) this was an electoral vulnerability that the Republicans would exploit and (b) Obama didn’t have a track-record in big-time politics that showed he could handle the attacks.
Thanks Hillary for doing the GOP’s work for it long after it was mathematically impossible for you to win.
That’s what Obamabots were arguing at the time.
The point people try to make with Wright is that Obama should have left the church in the past when Wright would make those comments, but he didn’t. I don’t think it’s a big deal, b/c politicians are always going to churches where the preachers say wacky things. Obama obviously doesn’t believe that stuff.
After Iowa, pace Hillary and Nobel Prize winner Krugman, I thought Obama had an excellent chance of winning. And thanks to the fact that voters are a little more reality-based than ideological Republicans, turns out he has a very good chance. [crosses fingers]
We are witnessing the death throes of the McCain campaign.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
It seems a little disingenuous to say “I won’t bring up Reverend Wright because I am a good guy” every day hoping that it pushes the media to do it for him. He has been, and will be outspent by a huge margin so he is trying to campaign on the cheap.
When his attempts to get free publicity fail, McCain plays hurt acting as though Obama has done something unfair. His first attempt was an extended series of town hall debates (to be paid for largely by the networks). The repeated references to Wright are simply another tactic along the same line. Later this week, expect a controversial ad that is aired only on YouTube and leaked to the cable news networks.
It is all about the money and McCain does not have supporters who are willing to back him up with real dollars.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
MattY seems to have found his level: singing to a choir of TP-level sockpuppets.
If MattY’s site wasn’t so infested, he and they might at least kick around some ways to counteract any Wright ads; childish comments won’t do it, especially when even RollingStone called BHO’s background “radical” (based on his relationship with Wright).
October 20th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
If Senator McCain brings up Wright, the Obama folks should bring up Rev. Sun Yung Moon.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
With Wright, the point is that he’s black.
Cue Obama bio ad about being raised in Kansas by white grandparents.
(God damn America.)
October 20th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I expect that, if McCain decides to push the Wright issue, the Obama camp will wait a couple days to see how people and the press are reacting to it. If they think it’s hurting them, Obama will announce another speech. He will then get 10-15 minutes of national air time in which he gets to make one of his beautiful and aspirational speeches that seem to resonate well among a large number of independents, reminding them of what it’s like to be led by someone who calls them to act on their better natures to fulfill the promise of America. His comments will build on his 2004 convention speech. He will reject the politics of the past (Wright) as divisive and small, implicating McCain as unable to move into the future because of he continues to dwell on this issue. He will weave in the McCain/Palin division of the country into “real” and “false” Americas, further indicting them as attempting political gain by tearing the country apart. He will conclude by making the case that now is the time for serious people to do serious things to put the economy back on track, for the betterment of all Americans, whose personal economic crises don’t adhere to racial or socio-economic boundaries. The press will likely decide that the issue has been adequately addressed–except Fox News, of course–and will move on to other things.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I think people like MattY are not taking the McCain attacks more seriously. Sure, bringing up Reverend Wright would not work for people like MattY, but I’m guessing there are parts of important states like Virginia, Ohio and Florida where it would work. Ohio is tightening up now, and I’m guessing a large part is the fabled white working class votes. If McCain goes full scale on all Reverend Wright all the time, Obama can probably forget all those inroads he made in Appalachian country. Virginia’s probably gone.
The problem is, not all voters are rational people like MattY who think in terms of narrative, or as he puts it, “the point”. Putting up Reverend Wright’s sermon on robocalls would be enough to scare some of these people against voting for Obama, never mind what narrative it is supposed to further.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Whoa, seriously, you can’t think of the angle McCain would use on Wright? Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, and you’re not sure what McCain would say about him?
What we have to thank Hillary for here is for making Jeremiah Wright yesterday’s news. If McCain does play the Wright card, it might still get some traction, but there’s also a good chance the press will look at it and say, “Didn’t we run through this back in the primaries?”
October 20th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
What could he say that hasn’t already been said? Everybody has already heard of Wright. This is like Colbert wearing a bracelet to remind himself he has a wrist.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Next, they’ll get a 12 year-old blonde waif to say that Rev. Wright Obama, and Bill Ayers in blackface sodomized her with a corncob to The Four Tops “Bernadette”. Somehow, Hugh Hewitt found a video and Hannity’s already got it cued up.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Matt has read Dreams from My Father. He’s smart enough to grasp how far left and racially obsessed Obama was when he wrote it in 1995. That’s why Matt had nothing, zero, nada, void to say about it except that it was well-written.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
LOL @ Sailer calling someone else racially obsessed.
Also, I have to give Whack-a-Mole some credit. While such luminaries as Al have long since given up the ghost, he continues to keep the troll flame burning by regaling us with his fucking idiotic opinions and whoring his shitty blog that no one reads.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
“Dreams From My Father” is more centrist than “Father Knows Best” and “Hazel”. And, it’s about as “racially obsessed” as a copy of “National Geographic”. Whatever Sailer’s on – there must be a meeting AA or NA meeting nearby he can chill out in.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:35 am
That’s why Matt had nothing, zero, nada, void to say about it except that it was well-written.
What I have to say about anything Sailer has ever written: nothing, zero, nada, void, except…nah, that’s it.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:06 am
I’m convinced we’re going to see an implication, along the lines of 2006’s “Call me, Harold” ad, that Obama has had sex with white women. Probably in the last week of the campaign.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:18 am
I think Cap Haddock and jeebus have it right — McCain has shown himself to be a real pussy this campaign, and a weasel to boot. Starting the Ayers crap immediately after the last debate is hilarious in its weaselly pussitude.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:27 am
McCain has a new attack, a gift given to him by Joe Biden! Biden states Barack if elected will be tested militarily. Biden is wrong on this issue because we live in a different world today than the cold-war mentality Biden grew up in. Leaders around the World are waiting for Barack Obama to become President as they know him to be a fair and just man. Ready to talk through problems than to bomb, bomb Iran!
There will be crisises but they are world crises such as the economic crisis we face today, which is a world crisis and countries around the world will have to work together to address this issue. They will not be thinking about fighting but on how to turn their respective economy around and they know that it will take a combined commitment of countries to get this situation under control, along with other challenging problems like climate change and energy. World leaders realize that only by working together with unity and inclusiveness will the world problems be solved. It is no longer an individual problem or isolated. These are world problems met by countries united and not divided.
**************************************************
The Russian mission to the UN in New York says it has turned down a request from John McCain to help fund his presidential campaign.
Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin and others received standard mail-outs asking them to help “stop the Democrats from seizing control of Washington”.
(More Republican Hypocrisy!)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7681168.stm
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