"To tell you the truth, Bill, I don't know why that association isn't discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that -- with, I don't know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn't get up and leave -- to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."Call me crazy, or overly optimistic, but I don't think Wright can save these fools. Racism is a luxury that, at this point, a lot of white voters can ill-afford. I think a crucial number of them know that. Furthermore, I really, really, really doubt Palin wants to get into a game of who has the nuttier religious connections.
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From the lips of unofficial GOP spokesperson Bill Kristol, we get Sarah Palin ruminating on Jeremiah Wright:
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They have a two-pronged plan:
• Obama is a radical unAmerican by association. (Example: above.)
• The press is mean. (Example: They claimed she went to Nebraska in pursuit of votes, rather than because Nebraska is a regular Joe Sixpack You Betcha Heartland State with Also Real Americans.)
It's going to be a rough two months.
And of course she'll play that game; one's own connections are never nutty, but rather Connections of Real American People of Faith. For those that say otherwise, see bullet point 2.
Yeah, I don't think that Rev. Wright can save them at this point. Everybody is already expecting them to play the 'Wright card,' so who can it possibly sway at this point? Obama has already been able to show that he's not some crazy radical. People clearly saw this during the first debate, and the subsequent debates will only strengthen that impression.
Plus, her husbad belonged to a political party that wanted to secede from the Union. Talk about hating your country.
"Governor Palin, does your husband love America as much as you do?"
All I can say is, keep talking lady! The more you yap, the more independents in a number of key states (like my home state of PA) move away from your ticket and/or the undecided column into Obama's. You are doing the Dems a huge favor; thank you.
mr. coates:
this isn't about wright.
its about ayers.
everyone's trippin: why isn't ayers sticking despite mccain's crew spending 10 million on it.
i'll tell you why.
its cuz ayers is white.
as far as terrorism goes, society has imputed terrorism to dark skinned people with arab or moslem names.
the way society imputed drugs to hispanics and violent crimes to blacks.
funny. ayers' white privilege benefits obama.
as for wright. palin is an idiot. the reason wright isn't brought up is cuz that'll give obama another opportunity to drop a big ol post-racial speech. more free air time for him.
They are gonna go there because that's all they got.
I agree with AE that Ayers is no big deal BUT the McCain camp don't care about Ayers. They care about the word "terrorist" and Ayers allowed them to introduce it.
Over the weekend Palin dropped using Ayers by name in her stump bit and has started to use a more general "terrorist".
It's no surprise that the RNC also launched a so called complaint into Obama's accepting of donations from foreign sources at the same time.
What connection you think they are trying to make...
TNC:
Sure, Palin's religious connections take the cake. As, for that matter, do her theological views, which are badly out of touch with mainstream America. It's not even close.
But that presumes that this is a dust-up over theology. America's discomfort with Jeremiah Wright has never been about his attempts (or ours) to comprehend the nature of the divine, much less the moral imperatives he draws from those attempts. (Work hard? Care for those less fortunate? Hardly the stuff of controversy.)
The problem, such as it is, with Jeremiah Wright is that he is an angry black man. He has at times, while invoking the prophetic voice, echoed the conspiratorial suspicions, resentments, and grievances that are the unfortunate inheritance of centuries of racial oppression. Many Americans harbor the fear that Obama cannot possibly mean what he says. That it's all a facade. That deep down, he resents them. That he's a radical. Or at the very least, that his associates are, and that his election would empower them. And to these voters, Jeremiah Wright stands as confirmation of all of their worst suspicions. I knew it they think. That skinny kid with the funny name, he doesn't love America. He hates it. He hates us, and everything we stand for. He's dangerous.
(Because I must, let me just reiterate that this is delusional. The signal facts about Barack Obama are his lifelong quest to build consensus, his unflagging optimism, and his commitment to respecting the motives and conclusions of others. It is these that are his greatest flaws, as well - he has sometimes seemed unable to connect with those who haven't been similarly successful, whose experiences have left them embittered and cynical, and unwilling to admit that some differences are unbridgeable and some fights worth having. Whatever else the man may be, he possesses as fundamentally unradical a temperament as any politician I have ever seen.)
So that's what raising Wright and Ayers is about. It's not about Obama's judgment. It's not about his theology or his beliefs. It's about labeling Obama as foreign, as dangerous, as radical, as other. And however ignorant she may be, however backward her own beliefs, however questionable her judgment, however radical her policy program, it's simply not a liability that Sarah Palin shares.
I'll trade you one witch doctor for one righteously angry urban preacher. She's on thin ice with this one! I don't know if the witch doctor's been played on the nightly news yet, but way to get him there, Sarah.
And this witch stuff is no joke. Talk about terrorists:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/22/2252041.htm
ae noted:
Because nobody ever called Timothy McVeigh a terrorist, right?
Look, if the toothless barracuda wants to talk about not running away from church affiliations, let's talk about receiving a blessing to ward off witchcraft, asking God to make her governor and stating that God wants an oil pipeline built.
Obama was eight freakin' years old when this happened. You'd think that the Christian right would believe in forgiveness or something like that.
I also think the O's are making a mistake going back to the Keating Five business. Just like Ayers, it's a long time since that shit went down and I just don't care that much.
Meh, glad we're talking about this rather than a financial meltdown.
john kerry did not think the swiftboats were that big a deal.
michael dukakis did not think that willie horton nonsense was that big a deal.
how many times do dems need to be cracked upside the head before they learn to take all of these attacks seriously?
while the attacks may be ridiculous to you and i, a certain percentage of voters, even in these perilous economic times, will take these charges seriously. the sheer impact of repetition will be negative and extemely corrosive. left unchallenged, it WILL destroy obama's campaign.
and if you do not believe that, just consider that a core percentage of americans - some with prominent media positions - still take a joke like sarah palin serious. palin is a person who should be laughed off the national stage - especially after 8 years of bush - but there are still plenty of voters out there who view her as a serious person.
a person never went broke underestimating the intelligence of the american voter.
this is a moment of truth.
we'll see if he is dukakis or whether he is bill clinton.
does he have the testicles to fight back or is he going to curl up in a whimpering ball and whine about being attacked?
it should be simple.
you want to talk about sketchy associations, let's talk about sketchy associations.
they should unload on both mccain and palin and blow them both out of the water: alaska seccessionists, troopergate, not paying taxes on per diems, rape exam kits, keating 5, phil gramm, rick davis and fannie mae and freddie mac, the entire trunkful of scandals that obama has avoided talking about.
if they refuse to strike back and strike back hard, this race will get increasingly tight in the coming weeks.
and it just might be tight enough for them to steal it.
Go back and read that Kristof column again, TNC. McCain isn't playing to the overt, ideological racists with this shit. He's already got them sewn up. He's playing to the aversive racists.
Look at the language his campaign is using. "How well do we know Barack Obama?" "Who is Barack Obama?" "This is not a man who sees America as you and I do." "Too risky for America."
This isn't about getting whites who hate blacks to notice that Obama is black. It's about pushing unconscious associations.
If McCain came out and said that Obama was unfit to be president because he's a Muslim, or because his father was African, or because he's a traitor, he'd be flayed in the press and lose in a landslide. Swing voters find that kind of overt racism repulsive. But if he can plant an impression of Obama as alien, as foreign, as unknown, as shadowy, those same voters may have second thoughts -- doubts that they can't quite even identify, or that they identify as being about something else.
Aversive racism. That's what this next month is going to be about.
Two points (not original to me) that are worth tossing out:
If Ayers is a "terrorist," why isn't he in jail? We jail shepherds on their neighbors' accusation (and while he's in gitmo, I'll take that field we've been fighting over); if Ayers is such a dangerous terrorist Cheney should have arrested him 7 years ago. Never charged? Never jailed? Hmm.
Most anyone who wants to work on education in Chicago will at some point work with Ayers. Can you work with the world as it is? Or do you retreat with your ball to pout until the opposing team, umps, and fans are all to your liking? 'Cause we've tried the last approach for almost 8 years now, without good result. If we won't deal with Russia, Iran, or Spain(!!) until everyone on their team is to our liking, we won't get much accomplished beyond a 4-year power pout.
They're going to go ugly the rest of the way, because they've got nothing of their own to run on. More tax cuts for the rich? Their health insurance plan that's expected to cause 20 million Americans to lose their employer-based health insurance? Their nonexistent efforts to give a boost to ordinary Americans in this recession?
But it isn't going to work. For rich people like McCain, 'the economy' may just be the stuff of newspaper headlines. But for most Americans, it's the stuff of their daily lives - and in bad times or uncertain times, there's no way for them to 'turn the page' away from it.
The people who want to hear about Wright or Ayers or Rezko are going to vote for McCain, no matter what. Nobody else wants to hear that crap; nobody else feels like they have the luxury of listening to such crap.
And one other thing: McCain's credibility is headed south at a remarkable rate. Palin's "team of mavericks" BS the other night merely underscored how far the "straight-talking maverick" brand has fallen. To the extent that McCain's ads are the source of this crap, that's just another reason for people to ignore it - and him, too.
Zogby agrees with you, Ta-nehisi.
And I agree with him.
Be afraid.
my Blade Runner quote was more than accurate.
Palin is a skinjob.
Or an ideological construct if you will.
With no intellectual curiousity and a profound conviction that God is on her side, she would be a disaster as President.
We had one of those already.
"its cuz ayers is white."
I think it has something more to do with Ayers doing his Weatherman thing before most people under 40 could remember it. To be completely honest, until the campaign happened the only time I'd even heard of anything called the Weather Underground was that it was an online weather forecasting site. And really, terrorists? After Tim McVeigh, setting off a bunch of bombs that didn't even kill anyone to protest the Vietnam War, seems like small potatoes.
However....I think we should both Be Afraid, and use mockery as a weapon.
Humor is a powerful and devastating weapon.
If SNL can successfully brand Palin as an un-presidential moron, we should never have to deal with her as a serious threat to our nation again.
I laugh at Palin, sure, but to me she represents a truly terrifying test of the Founders intent and our constitution.
The test is for the electorate, and the exam question is......Will you vote for a classic demagogue in the Age of American Idol?
Deborah, you really should have your own blog.
Politically, this is red meat for the base, and trolling in an attempt to change the subject.
Let's talk more about the Keating Five, Charles Keating's fraud, and John McCain's enabling of that fraud. And how the failure of Keating's S&L cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Does that seem like a familiar story? Can we afford another four years of this?
Anthony,
I have told her this many, many times.
to Cynic:
Well met. I agree with your take on what bringing Ayers and Wright up is really about.
But, the issue with Palin raising these questions herself is beyond cynical. Her favoribility numbers currently sit as a net negative. Her reach is marginilized in an of itself to those that are already on her side of the fence. Plus, she and Mac have not displayed the most democratic and transparent behaviors in the past weeks relating to the management of their campaign. In short, she has little cred out amongst a broad swath of the electorate and will be spoofed weekly (as she already has) in SNL. Bad move for her and mac to launch this line of attack. Not smart. Keating awaits them, a report on her abuse of power awaits them, an explanation of first dude's AIP inclinications await them, have you heard what the Michigan GOP county chair said about the McCain camp? Mac's handling of this current economic crisis yet awaits him...
They should not want to play this card, especially since the markets look to be tanking again today...
My only wish is that Hunter S. Thompson were still alive to write about this. For reference, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" is pretty relevant here, if you can get past all the tangents.
The Angry Black man is something White people have feared since Nat Turner. They fear it and know it.
White people here, you're telling me that Witch Hunter Preachers are common in your churches? I must ask, as a Black person.
But, if Caribou Barbie wants to bring up Jeremiah Wright, then let's do it. And I want the Witch Hunter running on an endless loop like Wright was.
As for Ayers - Obama was EIGHT YEARS OLD when Ayers did whatever he did. He paid his debt to society and became a functioning tax payer. Ayers knows the Mayor and the Governor. He's employed by well-respected institution of higher learning.
Either we believe in rehabilitation, or we don't as a society.
And, a woman married to a man who BELONGED TO SECESSIONIST GROUP FOR SEVEN YEARS..
shouldn't open her yap about anyone else's PATRIOTISM.
About racism being a luxury we whites can't afford right now, interesting item on Politico:
An Obama supporter, who canvassed for the candidate in the working-class, white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, sends over an account that, in various forms, I've heard a lot in recent weeks.
"What's crazy is this," he writes. "I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n----r and mention how they don't know what to do because of the economy."
I think that part of this is simply a shift to a more tradional strategy for a VP candiate. As it turns out that Palin's not going to be useful in drawing in undecided voters, the McCain folks are going to use her an attack dog instead. The story stops being "Palin's stupid" and becomes "Palin's an asshole." She's not going to be an asset anymore, but she may cease to become a liability.
Most anyone who wants to work on education in Chicago will at some point work with Ayers. Can you work with the world as it is? Or do you retreat with your ball to pout until the opposing team, umps, and fans are all to your liking?
Nicely put, Deborah. This matches the McCain/Palin approach to the world, though-- think about their ranting about 'unconditional talks' and the like.
Ayers did whatever he did. He paid his debt to society and became a functioning tax payer. Ayers knows the Mayor and the Governor. He's employed by well-respected institution of higher learning.
Most anyone who wants to work on education in Chicago will at some point work with Ayers. Can you work with the world as it is?
That is exactly the problem--and it's that fact that makes the Ayers issue a live issue. (As it was the Winter Soldier circus that made Swift-Boating a live issue.)
If you were a Klan member, we never quite trust you. If you were a Nazi supporter, we never quite trust you, but more so--as the Nazis were more murderous than the Klan. It should be, but isn't, that if you were ever a communist supporter, we never quite trust you, but more so yet--as the communists were the most murderous of all. But in reality, being a communist supporter is pretty much OK.
I agree with AE that Ayers is no big deal BUT the McCain camp don't care about Ayers. They care about the word "terrorist" and Ayers allowed them to introduce it.
That's exactly right. This has nothing to do with Ayers, nothing to do with the Sixties or the Weathermen. It's about finding an angle so that the McCain campaign can appear to legitimate the e-mail smears about Obama being a radical Muslim terrorist-lover, without literally saying so.
Making Palin an attack dog in this style eradicates any future she has as a national political candidate. Not that she ever really had one or that the Republican party would ever seriously get behind a woman.
Great point about Ayers being white. Somehow painting all terrorists as dark skinned Arabs sure seems to backfire now doesn't it.
Obama shouldn't even address any of the attacks tonight. He should say clearly "John, I'm going to borrow the tactic of your running mate and not answers these questions but speak directly to the American people about the challenges they face on a daily basis. If you want to waste their time focusing on past associations because you have no fresh ideas and are tied to a bankrupt political and economic philosophy, be my guest but I'm going to speak about issues that affect all Americans tonight"
Game would be over.
Great to hear you on Minnesota Public Radio yesterday morning. And thanks for these discussions of race...
The fact that Ayers and Reverend Wright were already an issue during the primary actually helps Obama, I think. It's not some big, scary revelation anymore. Obama already gave the big speech on race to deal with the Reverend Wright issue, and journalists have written the stories on how Ayers is actually part of Chicago establishment now. (We can still argue endlessly about whether Ayers deserves that kind of respect or position - and I for one definitely think the guy should be in prison instead of teaching college kids - but that's another issue altogether).
Who would have though that Hillary Clinton was actually right? Heh. The long, tedious, endless, insufferable primary battle did in some ways strengthen Obama as a candidate. If Clinton hadn't brought up Ayers and Reverend Wright, I'm sure McCain people would have found out anyway. And if McCain waited until the last minute to bring up Ayers and Reverend Wright, imagine how much more devastating the impact would be. There wouldn't have been enough time for Obama to counter, and for journalists to find some answers.
Thanks for stating the obvious. Coates gets the "Quote of the Day" on RealityChex.com at http://www.realitychex.com -- a good site to find all the latest news & smartest commentary on the presidential race.