Mott's Blog

Several things are now clear from Obama's Phillie speech and the reaction to it. 1. Obama heard Wright's rants and was well aware of the extreme allegations of Wright's radical black theology. Obama's early statements that he had not heard these crazy theories and rants from Wright in his 20 years at the church were LIES. Obama's first instinct in the controversy was to lie about his own involvement. 2. Obama still tries to portray his own tolerance of the Wright's extremism as a decision based on balancing the good and the bad and part of some metaphysical process. The truth, which everyone knows, is that Obama is half-white and an Ivy-Leaguer and was entering politics in a black section of Chicago and needed "black bona fides." He sat and listen, gave money to the church, and supported it and Rev. Wright because doing so HELPED HIM POLITICALLY at the time. Now it doesn't, so he can say that he always disagreed with the extremist rants. 3. Obama...

Okay... he still wants to be the uniter...is that a surprise? Nice speech...good rhetoric. This is undoubtedly make his supporters happy. Senator Obama tries to "turn the corner" as we used to say in debate. But I don't think that the speech ends the controversy or gives him a bye on the situation he allowed to develop. When Obama needed black community bona fides in Chicago, he sought out this church and Rev. Wright to get them. When he needs to be acceptable to white voters, he rejects the views that he heard for twenty years [after of course, denying that he ever heard them]. Which is it? Was he lying when he said he never heard this type of viewpoint or is he lying when he says that he understood Rev. Wright's viewpoint while disagreeing with it? Two Obamas- one for the Chicago voters where he started out and one now for his national campaign. Several versions of the Rev. Wright controversy, all of which seem mutually exclusive. Add in Michelle Obama's speech...

A survey of the blogs' sphere and the news clips suggest that the Rev. Wright story has "legs" and is breaking into a full trot. Tracking polls show Obama slipping dramatically ...... The story is amplified by Michelle Obama's "never proud of America" comment and the Pledge of Allegiance and flag lapel pin stories. Throw in his own campaign foreign affairs advisor telling an interviewer that he is not ready to be commander and chief...... It really looks like the Democratic Party was done in by its own pedantic political correctness. They just refused to vet this guy because he was black. Affirmative action is not a very effective technique to select Presidential candidates. I predict that this stuff will spiral out of control at this point. Obama is a very brittle guy when hit with adversity. His responses on this issue get progressively worse and less credible as each new one contradicts the last one. This stuff is particularly poisonous for Obama, who ...

Probably too late for Hillary Clinton, but the Barrack Obama bubble appears to be bursting before it got very far off the ground. He now does worse than Hillary in general election head-to-head polls against McCain. McCain's projected margin over Obama in the somewhat misleading national polls is growing....it is misleading because it does not reflect even more profound state-by-state polls. Ultimately winning one state at a time is all that matters. Ask Al Gore. McCain is now ahead in polling in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and is winning or in striking distance in many more "blue states" in head-to-head general election polls. What is happening? The public through the new media is finally getting to "vet" Barrack Obama. The other Democratic candidates have been gentile to a fault by U.S. election standards, both because they feared a racial connotation in any attack and because they were all competing for the very leftist Democratic primary voters....