Goodman Barack

Barack has resigned from his church.

(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's campaign confirmed Saturday that he has resigned from the Chicago church where controversial sermons by his former pastor and other ministers created repeated political headaches for the Democratic frontrunner.

The resignation comes days after the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a visiting Catholic priest, mocked Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, for crying during the runup to the New Hampshire primary.

Previously, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ and Obama's minister for about 20 years, drew unwanted attention for the campaign when videos of his fiery sermons surfaced.

What a man of judgment! Absolutely everybody in America is impressed. In a mere twenty years he's managed to figure out that there's something offensive in being racist.

The interesting thing now is this: Since he has now thrown the entire congregation under the bus (all those cheering Pfleger and Wright and the new pastor, Moss) will there be some in that congregation who will decide to throw Obama under the bus? I would imagine that there could be some testimony that Barack was a'cheer'n bro too.

This stuff is cumulative. One wonders when the Democrat party will have enough sense to throw Barack under the bus? This should encourage Hillary to not accept any compromise on MI and FL delegate seating. She doesn't have to, it keeps her options open not to, right up to the convention. This politically necessary but surprisingly sudden resignation is blood in the water, and blood in the water is encouraging.

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6:25
Ha! Byron York asks the obvious questions everybody will ask; and then this:

Hillary's Threat: On To Denver! [Byron York]

From Harold Ickes, moments ago at the DNC rules and bylaws committee meeting.
Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee.
05/31 06:59 PM

This is an everybody-sees-the-same-blood a-swirling-in-the-waters sort of response.

I sure will be pleased if it's the Democrats who get rid of Obama, rather than leaving it up to Republicans. Anybody who dumps on the Bambi will be a racist. Let the racists all be Democrat.

Note: I first spotted this story on Ace of Spades HQ, posted by Drew. Turns out that Drew himself used to be a Nazi, but he apologizes and doesn't want it held against him because he just didn't know they said "things like that" in an Aryan church. He firmly expects that no American will be so racist as to not accept his apology, and recognize that he is pure in heart.

Incoming

Early Exits: Hillary by 31 in Kentucky; Obama by 15 in Oregon. Of course the Oregon "exits", since it's an all mail-in ballot and there are no polling booths, is actually a phone poll, which makes it another degree removed from accuracy from the ordinary exit polls, which themselves seem always to somewhat over poll for Obama.

Also just heard that that erie, one man 75,000 political draw --the photograph showing one man on the stage, and all those people watching-- was actually opened by a free concert given by The Decemberists, apparently a very popular rock band. That's fine, but no statement of that in any of the news coverage. That's a total lie by the media. (Drudge was part of that too. Disappointing).

Everybody was deceived. This from Rich Lowry:

Obama's Crowd
It's already been discussed in here, but 75k is really extraordinary. A friend of mind today said when he first saw the pictures he thought it was a gathering for the pope. (And in a way, it was.) He'll probably be getting crowds of 100k in the fall. Doesn't mean he's going to win. We've seen in his race against Hillary that crowd size isn't necessarily an indicator of votes. But what a phenomenon!

What a phenomenon is right, that how he attracted the crowd was reported nowhere.

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7:40 PM
71% reporting: Clinton 65, Obama 31. --Apparently Hillary won every demographic again, including the demographics that so heavily favor Obama in Oregon. Probably won't be any meaningful numbers from Oregon before Midnight, if then.

So Goes Portland So Goes the Nation

I don't know how to call Oregon. I've said that I think this has become a racial election. If that's true Hillary will do surprisingly well; but it's also possible it's become a fascistic election, in which case Obama's support will be overwhelming.

Oregon is half conservative and half liberal, but only the liberal half will be voting Democrat. Liberals have an inclination towards the strong man, Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe come to mind. Obama personally is a weak fish, but he certainly has a nice contempt for the democratic process and for all those who don't support him. Who knows how well that might appeal to Portland?

I'll stick with Hilllary by two points, because a white response to black racialism would be wholesome, and it might happen; but then there is that extraordinarily unnerving 75,000 soul rally Obama had just this weekend, of the brain dead, the committed, the violent. These are extraordinarily dangerous people, in that their contempt for opposition is absolute --any means to any end. Such people in any society tend to be in the minority, simply because such violence of conviction requires an absorption most people don't have time for, just because they're too busy being involved in their own private life...

But then this is just an election. Just one primary. It's easy to just send in a ballot, just like your vocal neighbors... But then it's also very easy just to send in a ballot the opposite of your neighbors, just because you're sick of them being such intemperate jerks.

We'll see.

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A word on the possibility that Obama may claim victory tonight in Iowa in terms of having secured a majority of pledged delegates. As it's expressed in the New York Times:

The results from the Kentucky and Oregon primaries on Tuesday will almost certainly allow Mr. Obama to reach a threshold that his campaign has long sought to establish as the critical measure of the will of the party: winning a majority of the delegates awarded in primaries and caucuses. (emphasis mine)

And as countered by Michael Barone:

Obama is not likely to have enough superdelegates lined up by next Tuesday night. As this is written, RealClearpolitics.com has Obama at 1,891 delegates. Current polling gives him 58 percent of the two-candidate vote in Oregon and 34 percent of the two-candidate vote in Kentucky. That should give him, under the proportional representation rules, about 17 delegates in Kentucky and about 30 in Oregon. That puts him at 1,938.

The number needed to declare a majority, and that's only by totally disenfranchising both Michigan and Florida, is 2,025. To get to that number he would need superdelegates. Superdelegates are not elected in primaries or caucuses, thus to suggest that he's gotten to 2,025 is to mislead; and anyway, the expressed will of the superdelegate has no legal standing, since at anytime they can change their mind. Their votes can only be determinative when cast at the convention.

Note: The best article I've found on the complexities of the Democrat math, both in counting the delegates and determining the popular vote.

Note once again: I finally understand what's being argued. By the end of tonight Obama will have a majority of the delegates that are to be selected through primaries and caucuses, but not the number needed for the nomination, which is dependent on the superdelegates; neither candidate having the possibility of gaining that number through the vote. I've always understood that to be the case. Why did I misunderstand that tonight Obama would be claiming the number needed for nomination? I would have to review what I've read, but I have an idea there's been some word play, such that "pledged delegates" were conflated with the delegates to be selected by the vote tonight, suggesting he had won a majority through the electorial process, and leaving out mention that his majority depended on the superdelegates. --Or maybe I just read carlessly and should just scratch this post. --I think I'd better start a new post.

Oregon?

Did West Virginia matter? I say it did.

I keep waiting for Obama to implode. I can't see that he's got anything going for him other than that he's a "Not Hillary", and a black guy with a grin. He's also a vapor brain, a radical, a race seeped introspectionist --and thus as the first "post-partisan post-racial" very modern black man-- a liar and a hypocrite. And thin-skinned, hyper ego-inflated, and a pansy as well, just to randomly mention a few additional negatives.

My opinion: Four months ago I thought he was a simple soul but basically a nice guy who was honest. I think I note a change in my judgment; I can't believe other people aren't having a change in their judgment as well.

Normally, when discussing Republicans, I presume any change in my judgment is going to be the prevailing dynamic of the campaign. That tends to work well enough because as a Republican I'm pretty much in the middle, what happens to me happens to others. But these are Democrats I'm trying to consider. This is a different species.

I'm going to presume this: I'm going to presume some Democrats have emotions, and that not all of those emotions are ideological. I think this is safe. I think there probably is no such thing as a Democrat argument that's not ideological, but I do think there are non-ideological emotions that aren't that different from mine. And anyway, in this intraparty primary between two lefties, what's to be ideological about? This isn't "Any lie will do because the enemy is a Republican", this is tweedle against twiddle, so judgment can only be based on personal distinctions. It's pretty clear to me which one of the candidates is smarter, as well as which one it is who has balls. Yet it's the other who gets all the fawning attention.

It does seem to me that after awhile that gets annoying. There's no rational person who doesn't understand who would have the better capacity to govern, yet these rational people are pressured to abandon their brains and fall on their knees and worship blackness. For a lot of people that's not a worship they find terribly satisfying. That's why I think West Virginia was important. Every demographic in that state rebelled against the new pope. Once you have apostasy it can catch fire, and I think that's what may have happened. West Virginians --not so much hicks as Jacksonian frontiersman-- made clear it's okay for white folk to tell a black guy to shove it up his nose.

When the black guy in question is a snot-nose, this is wholesome. Hillary by two.

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Note: A friend just called. Long chat. He wanted to prove to me he wasn't a racist for disliking Obama. It had just occurred to him that if Collin Powell were running he would vote for him in a heart beat. That this as a new thought to him I can believe because he's a Democrat and so possibly had never before considered that option. That he would in fact vote for Powell I can believe because I know how much he respects personal courage and integrity, and that's Powell. What's interesting is that he guiltily felt he had to justify his dislike. I have no such problem. Obama is a drip. Once it become acceptable to call a drip a drip Obama's numbers will drop.

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To make a more standard argument:

--At the end of January in Oregon Hillary still had a substantial lead over Obama, it seems to me it was something like 65 - 35. She's gotten bad press since but Hillary is Hillary, she hasn't changed. If people liked her once they can like her again.

--The most recent ARG poll puts the numbers at: Obama 50, Hillary 45; 5% undecided. By the Bradley effect that means Obama has less than 50%, Hillary more than 45. --Late deciders go very heavily for Hillary. That puts her very close. Of those polled who had already sent in their ballots (about 25% ?) the numbers were split evenly, 49 - 49. Again, by the Bradley effect, that means that in the early going Hillary is in the lead.

Or course, polls are sometimes off. But I would say things look very good for Hillary. The demographics do favor Obama, but it's fundamentally an all white state, and I don't know that the dynamics favor Obama because he is running a don't-criticize-me-I'm-a-black campaign, and that's exactly the kind of campaign that could break on racial lines.

Our National Conversation

Some thoughts on the West Virginia white-racist-hick-vote. No news I've read yet, I don't know if turnout is heavy or light.

This primary has no significance except as part of the "national conversation on race." It will pass as insignificant, a slightly off-color remark, unless the result is both large in margin and massive in turnout. Turnout may be down in part simply because Barack didn't campaign there. He's the catalyst. He hasn't ignored that state as a concession, he's ignoring it first to delegitimize it as a contest, and secondly to cut his loss; if he stays away the statement will have less force than if he campaigns and energizes his opposition.

I do think it would be best for the country if the Democrats did the whole racial fight themselves, and left the Republicans out of it. If he is the nominee and it goes to the general it will be not only a racial contest but one fueled by party partisanship, and that would have force and that would get ugly.

Hard to know what party it would hurt more. How many Democrat victim groups want to be held hostage to the demands of that one dominant victim group? I have an idea that within the party itself mutual animosities would become intense. It's not a rainbow coalition if one group is getting all the press.

But of course it would be the Republicans who would be the racists. It's interesting though, that in fact, most Republicans would be voting against Obama without much emotion, and very little of it racial. The guy is a loser, and very probably a loon, a vote against him is easy. Still, the vituperation in the press would be intense --against McCain, against Republicans, against whites. And in fact a lot of independent and Democrat whites, sick of being called racist, would vote "racist" as a way of establishing to themselves that this in fact is a very normal rational response to a rump party obsessed with race. But everybody would be in a very bad mood.

But who knows about tonight? One way to avoid all the unpleasantness of being involved in this kind of fight would be to just stay home, and that might happen.

Note: I've heard noise that Huckabee is being considered as a possible veep. Haven't read the articles yet but it occurs to me that he might be the one man who could diffuse this racial tension. If he could make clear the difference between the true Christian message and Wright's hatred, if he could persuade 20% to 30% of blacks that that mattered a great deal, then McCain might get that 20% to 30%. If that happened it would no longer be a racial contest because race itself had established that there were other issues besides race.

So tonight? We'll see. Either a big nothing, or something substantial.

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5:45 CDT
Amazingly little coverage, but apparently heavy turnout, not sure if it's state wide. Presumably the margin will be wide. Could be a significant night.

Of significance so far:

--Barack is pretending this isn't happening, he isn't even going to give a concession speech tonight.
--75% of all voters say Barack shares "a lot", "somewhat", or "not much" of the views expressed by Wright; only a quarter say not at all.
--Fifty-nine percent of Clinton voters say they would not vote for Obama if he's the nominee. Thirty-five percent said they would vote for McCain, 24% would sit the election out.

Interesting numbers, and given some force as coming from people who have just voted, at a point in the primary cycle when people are normally already starting to coalesce around the presumptive nominee. It is possible this is a night that will have to be discussed.

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6:50
Polls closed twenty minutes ago. From exit polls so far she's winning with 69% of the white vote. No official word yet on turnout. --And no exit numbers on the black vote. Some split would be an exceptionally welcome development.

My own feeling is that Barack is being a chump and a coward by not giving a gracious concession speech. He doesn't want coverage, but the message he's sending is that he's a chump, a coward, a sore loser, and a man who can not unite the country, who doesn't have the words for it, and can't even face the problem. It may indicate he's a political idiot as well. It's not as if this is a result he couldn't have foreseen and met with something more prepared than a duck and a dodge. It clearly indicates he's not prepared to be president of all the people.

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I'm stealing an entire Post from RCP Blog

Posted by KYLE TRYGSTAD

Quite simply, the exit polls show Hillary Clinton winning almost every demographic category possible.Groups Obama usually carried in previous primary states he lost tonight bysometimes two-to-one margins -- such as voters under the age of 30.

Voters in the West Virginia primary were overwhelmingly white (95%) andliving in rural or suburban areas (97%). Clinton won 69% of white voters,including 74% of white women.

Obama has regularly carried college-educated, higher-income voters. Butnot in West Virginia. Clinton won 75% of those with no college educationand 58% of those with a college education. She also carried every incomebracket. She won liberals, moderates and conservatives all by about two-to-one.

Two outside factors also helped Clinton: 79% of Clinton voters said BillClinton, who carried the state in the 1992 and 1996 general elections, campaigningin the state was important; and 51% of all voters said they think Obama sharesthe views of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- and Clinton won84% of them.

Still haven't seen a black vote breakdown.

Geraghty has a similar very nice post.

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9:40
Fifty-four percent reporting in: Clinton 65; Obama 28; and "anybody but either" 7%. Pretty good. Clinton won every demographic! But that's only white voters. Apparently there aren't enough minorities to be considered a fair sample, so no report on how the black vote fell out. And still no word on total turnout, just that it was "heavy".

Still, this is a very sobering result: Late in the race, Obama clearly the nominee, and not one white demographic supports him! That's probably never happened before since Rome.

West Virginia?

In keeping with my practice of embarrassing myself, I predict: Hillary wins West Virginia. With a walloping margin. And with a walloping turnout.

It's only this last that's uncertain. Who's gong to bother to turn out to vote when the race has already been decided? And even on the safer question of margin, who's gong to vote for Hillary when they can vote for the winner?

Educated opinion differs. Normally, when there's a clear winner in the making, support swings solidly behind him. After all, he must be good, otherwise why should so many others support him? And of course the turn out is light because who needs to go to the trouble of casting a meaningless vote?

But who knows what the dynamics are now, with the black candidate supported by 93% of blacks, and the white woman of the same party --once popular-- now supported by only 7% of that same black voting block? That seems awfully racial, especially since that black candidate's political accomplishments seem only marginally more than those of your average grocery store clerk. It might be that all the hoopla over His Highness has come to seem offensive.

But who knows...

The problem with my pulling for Hillary over Obama is that I don't like either of them. I do want Hillary to win because I'm Republican and I want to see a fight in Denver and at the end of the season I want her to be a steam roller. But she wasn't in North Carolina, she wasn't in Indiana. No boil, no steam. What's the possibility she's going to create some heat in West Virginia?

I don't see it happening, but that doesn't mean things aren't hot. The massive, non-critical support for such a marginal black man as Obama is something that's a kind of fuel; and the fawning of the MSM and their declaration that the race is over and that West Virginian's are hicks is more than a spark.

If there is a very large turnout for Hillary it means there is a very great deal of ill-will.

That will be interesting. The party doesn't want to lose the black vote by "stealing" the nomination from Obama, but how much of the white vote do they want to lose if indeed the resentment towards Obama is immense?

I don't know the answer because it's a matter of numbers and intensity and close-vested thought, but this contest is now a racial divide and there's no way to pretend it's not.

I do think it's the black vote that has made it racial. Ninety-three percent Obama support after Reverend Wright is racial voting (91%?). Racial voting engenders racial response. If West Virginia goes 80% Clinton it's a result blacks have earned. We may be having our "racial conversation" through the ballot box.

But I don't know.

The Pudding...

4:05 PM, is not yet in the bowl. I haven't even yet gotten a firm handle on whether the turnout is very heavy or not. And the final polls are all over. Barack by two in Indiana, Hillary by twelve. In NC Barack solidly in double digits, or maybe ahead only by four. --There do tend to be a lot of undecideds...

I will note my very strong prejudice that I want Hillary to be the one to knock Barack out of the race. I want all the bitterness to be intraparty, and not aimed at the Republicans. And I do maintain hope for a split in the black vote, which would declaw people like the Reverend Wright. It certainly would be wholesome and at this point I do see it as possible, because faith has now entered the mix, and it's not now merely politics. There doesn't have to be much initial change for it to be established as a dynamic.

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7:17,
Mixed and poured but not yet taken its set; no numbers. Presumedly NC for Obama, and I presume Indiana for Hillary, though it hasn't been called. No network projected margin for Obama in NC. --It does appear things are going to turn out about as folks projected purely in consideration of demographics. That's pretty disappointing. --I'm yet sticking yet with my sense of the dynamisms, at least until I see some numbers. The most important prediction is some black split on Obama. The exits I think have it 92 - 8. If that's true it's terrible. But I wonder if there might be some Bradly effect here, that a black won't tell a pollster he didn't vote for a black? --Numbers later.

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8:15
Going to hang it up for awhile. Numbers coming in very slowly, about 57% of precincts for Indiana, about 26% NC. Obama is way ahead in North Carolina, but I believe that will tighten considerably as the outlying districts report. Indiana looks like it will be a mid single digit win for Hillary. --I continue to presume the exits are off for NC.

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8:45
50% Precincts NC: Obama 57%; Hllary 42%. This has closed from I think in the twenties.
Indiana, 73% precincts: Hillary 52.5; Barack 47.5. About what I had expected 30 minutes ago.

Black Vote Bubble Blunder?

I'm hearing that the black vote in North Carolina is very heavy, therefore a solid win for Obama. Everybody knows that black people vote black.

I've also read an article in RCP by Stephen Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom. They argue that there is something of a black church in America --that is, a church of some shared heritage and shared theology-- and that parishioner Obama's and Reverend Wright's church have nothing to do with that black church at all.

I'm arguing that the bubble is that the liberal press and the liberal Mr. Obama can't see that faith is important to the black congregant in America and that they thus might be upset by Mr. Obama calling a racist church "the black church". That might mean that a heavy black turnout in NC is in fact not good for the big O.

We'll see. As I've noted before, this is a primary. A vote for anyone is a vote for a Democrat. It's not so hard for a Democrat to vote for a Democrat. But which one? Will race be the only consideration made by the black voter? Or will what the candidate is and believes matter as well?

I still think faith will matter to many, and in this respect Obama's faith is troubling.

This is how the Thernstrom article begins:

In his recent incendiary remarks, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. claimed that criticism of his views is nothing less "an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition." Can it really be that millions of black Americans regularly choose to listen to viciously anti-white and anti-American rants on Sunday mornings?

Happily, Chicago's Trinity Church is an outlier in that regard. Most black churchgoers belong to congregations that are overwhelmingly African-American and are affiliated with one of the historically black religious denominations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) or the National Baptist Convention. Rev. Wright's Trinity Church, on the other hand, is a predominantly black branch of a white denomination that is not part of "the African-American religious tradition." The United Church of Christ (known until 1957 as the Congregational Church) has a little over a million members; a mere 4 percent of them are black. Fewer than 50,000 blacks in the entire nation worship at a UCC church.

In contrast, 98 percent of the National Baptist Convention's 4 million members are African Americans. Add in black Methodists and Pentecostals, as well as other black Baptists, and the total comes to more than 14 million members of an organized, predominantly African-American church. These churches include a substantial majority of all black adults today. In terms of sheer demographic weight, they clearly represent the "African-American religious tradition"-as Rev. Wright's branch of a overwhelmingly white denomination does not.

In comparing this massive demographic to Wright's church (the church to which Obama now claims allegiance, rather than to the man) the article goes on:

The web sites of Rev. Wright's Trinity Church and the national body to which it belong stand in shocking contrast. Before the Trinity site was sanitized in early 2008, its material seethed with racial animus and hostility towards America. It described itself as "Afrocentric"; its motto was "Unashamedly Black, Unapologetically Christian." Its quasi-literate foundational document, "The Black Value System," devoted much more attention to blackness than to Christianity. It is the manifesto of a church for people of the black race, designed to be an "instrument of Black self-determination." Blacks were depicted as a race apart-the scurrilous perspective that pervaded Rev. Wright's April 27 Detroit speech, in which he contended that blacks and whites had completely different brain structures, one left-dominant, the other right-dominant. This is nothing more than an updated version of the pseudo-science once used to defend segregation in the Jim Crow South.
(Snip)
Clearly, Rev. Wright does not speak for mainstream black churches-and he has done them a gross disservice by claiming to do so. He shares neither their vision nor their values....

I'm pleased by this statement. I expect some black Christian repudiation of Obama as a man who holds views antithetical to their own. I just don't know the numbers.

Applecart Upset?

In keeping with my intent to record my predictions --so that I can't later more favorably misremember my perspicacity-- I call Indiana plus ten for Hillary, and North Carolina plus two for her as well.

The reasoning is pretty simple, Hillary is a well known witch, her negatives can't get worse; Obama is a poorly known, very pleasant fraud, his negatives can only get worse as he becomes better known. He's had a very bad couple of weeks, with his pastor popping off, and this just at a time primary voters are most seriously focusing on the candidates. Hillary has not had a bad two weeks. She's been holding steady, has been pretty good humored, has been campaigning hard, --and most importantly, has had noting to do with the Obama self inflicted wounds. She can't be attacked as negative. The conclusion then is that Obama has been hurt, Hillary has been helped.

The greatly interesting race is North Carolina, and the most interesting demographic there is not the white working class, strongly swinging toward Hillary, but the black voter, presumedly 85% to 90% in the tank for Obama. Are they?

It's my presumption that there are black congregations in North Carolina that are actually Christian. It can not be a happy discovery for them to learn that their great black pride for president, such a pleasant seeming fellow, sat in a pew for twenty years listening to hate being spewed under the coloration of Christian faith. That's an abomination of the faith, and it immensely compromises the congregant who apparently found that message suitable for himself, his wife, and his daughters.

I have no numbers, but I would bet there are more blacks who take their faith seriously --its gentleness, it's love of neighbor, its aspiration toward moral self-improvement and personal salvation-- than there are those who consider it merely as a means to a vicious political struggle. I rather expect that the "angry black church" is pretty much just an inner city very liberal church; and I do think that a properly offended faith is probably the one power strong enough to counter what would be otherwise a justifiable pride of race in supporting an apparently good man as a viable aspirant to the presidency of the United States.

What percentage of the black vote did Jesse Jackson get? How large was the black turnout? I don't have the numbers but I know the answer is: less; and less. Barrack is heading in the direction of Jesse.

So in North Carolina the black vote will be somewhat depressed, and less favorable towards Barack than normal. The split now in the polls is fairly close, Obama always slightly over polls and he anyway has never been over 50%. And there is now a new dynamic, created by Obama and in opposition to Obama. I think this dynamic is powerful. I see a possibility that the more constant Hillary can profit from this dynamic and pull off a victory.

Note: It would be of extreme value to everybody if the black vote split. This race has become about race. If the black vote split it would become a race about personalities and beliefs. That would be far more wholesome.