April 28 may be the date Barack Obama lost any chance he had of winning the White House.
After an incendiary address at an NAACP dinner and a rambling interview with Bill Moyers on PBS last weekend, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor, went before the National Press Club in Washington on Monday and left no doubt that he was a fool.
He lobbed a Molotov cocktail at Obama for distancing himself from Wright’s vicious sermons that accused the U.S. government of inventing the AIDS virus to kill black people, routinely called America “U.S. of KKK A,” compared America to al Qaeda and blamed the victims for 9/11.
Obama on Tuesday called his pastor’s comments “appalling,” but that won’t help him much as he sinks in the polls.
No wonder former Gov. Mike Huck-abee, himself a former presidential hopeful, thinks Hillary Clinton might be paying Rev. Wright to embarrass Obama, who was a member of Wright’s church for 20 years.
Obama must have heard plenty of bigoted sermons over the years at Trinity United Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago, where the Nation of Islam has its headquarters.
Wright is a lot like Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, whom Wright calls a friend. Wright left the National Press Club with a phalanx of Nation of Islam bodyguards.
He complains about the media using only soundbites to make him look bad, but almost everything he says is weird.
“I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” the pastor told the Press Club. Perhaps blow up the Twin Towers? He also contradicted Obama’s claims that he wasn’t at church when the Rev. Wright gave his strange sermons.
Obama has looked grim all month, as if he’d been expecting some bad news. I guess he knew Rev. Wright was going to go nuts at the Press Club, and he was right.
Obama could still get the nomination, but if he does, Republicans will crucify him over his association with the Reverend. Be prepared for more of Rev. Wright’s soundbites 24/7 this fall.
Hillary and Bill Clinton are hoping the Reverend will scare primary voters and superdelegates away from Obama, who knows he’s been wounded and sees his presidential hopes are fading.
John McCain, meanwhile, doesn’t have to do anything except stay awake and not say anything dumb while Democrats duke it out.
Rev. Wright will never get a cabinet post in an Obama administration, but Sen. Clinton and Sen. McCain might reward him with a job if he helps either one get elected, and it looks like he will.
