How will Wright affect Obama's support from McCaskill, Sebelius?

Read many articles before making a decision to abandon Obama. There are many issues. Obama is in a very difficult position because he has tried to keep his campaign above race.

Hillary has used the vote for me because I am a woman, but Obama has gone the opposite direction to avoid being a "black" candidate.

Listen to his speech tomorrow, he is being forced to talk about racial issues that no one wants to admit is still a major issue in our country.

Rev Wright was correct about many of the anti-American and anti-white statements; however, Obama has never agreed with the method used by Wright.

Why did Senator Obama try to hide this from us? I thought he was about transparency? On the day he announced his intent to run for president, he asked Wright not to do the invocation because he was afraid of being associated with him. How transparent is that? It was a lie! That was well over a year ago. One month ago the minister "retired"....how convenient. There's too much smoke here! In 2006 he bought his house in a "deal" with Renzko and called it "boneheaded". That's called cheating even though nothing illegal happened, it was wrong and gave the appearance of a deal that could have been used against him by Renzko through blackmail. Senator Obama was a law professor and that makes all of this even scarier!! Too much smoke, too many flags!!! Democrats will never win with this guy!! Hello President McCain!

Before the tapes of Sen. Obama's pastor were revealed this past week, I had gone to the web site of the Trinity United Church of Christ (tucc.org) weeks earlier in an attempt to discover who Obama really is beyond all the campaign rhetoric. (Obviously, McClain and Clinton are known quantities.)

I was dismayed to learn that Trinity preaches a consciously SEPARATIST theology - a stark contrast to Obama's 'unity' campaign.

I understand the anger and the separatist impulse of those who have been victimized by racism. But it is appropriate for a presidential candidate to align himself with those values? Hillary Clinton surely has experienced sexism in her life - including during this campaign - and yet doesn't attend a separatist feminist church.

I don't accept Sen. Obama's excuse that he never heard Rev. Wright using the racist (and vulgar) words (and gestures) revealed on the tapes. That defies credulity. Not only has Sen. Obama known Rev. Wright for over 20 years; not only did Wright marry Obama and baptize his two children; but also the New York Times reported that Rev. Wright had been uninvited at the last minute to Obama's announcement last year in Springfield, IL that he was running for the Dem. nomination for president because they knew Wright was a controversial figure in Obama's life.

So who is Barack Obama? I still don't know and therefore cannot vote for him should he become the Dem. nominee.

Vote for anyone who sits and condones his "spritual leader" for screaming GD America from the pulpit? It is beond me. Add to that his wife saying she is for the "first time proud of America". I am sorry, I don't see any defense for this lack of judgement, particularly when deciding upon the most powerful office in the free world.

A simple quiz - Which of following shows Obama's racist or anti-american values?

a. The 800+ bills that Obama wrote or sponsored in IL
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/29/us/politics/20070730_OBAMA_GRAPHIC.html

b. His US senate bills on WW threat reduction, government ethics, and immigration reform that he co-sponsored with Senator Lugar, Coburn and and Hagel.
http://thomas.loc.gov

c. The expanded health care he passed for 150,000 children?

It is incredibily arrogant and ignorant to presume to know what one man can learn from his church or pastor and then to make that the reason for how they vote for the president of a secular nation.

The Obama/Wright issue is not about race or religion; it's about judgment. Most of us, faced with a radical pastor with a hate-filled message, wouldn't take 20 years to conclude that perhaps we could find a church that better matched our convictions. Obama's protests that he didn't hear the questionable sermons nor share convictions with his pastor of 20 years are simply not believable.

• When you attend a church for 20 years, you subscribe to its teachings.
• When the pastor to that church marries you and wife, you subscribe to its teachings.
• When you baptize your children in a church, you subscribe to its teachings.
• When you donated $20,000+ to that church last year, you subscribe to its teachings.
• When the title of your book is inspired by a sermon by the pastor of that church, you subscribe to its teachings.
• When you "disinvite" your pastor of 20 years from delivering the invocation at your presidential announcement, saying "You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public", you can't claim later that you have "never personally heard Rev. Wright preach hate speech". America won't believe you! And further, America won't ELECT you!

Barack Obama is tainted as a candidate and cannot win in November. His unwise association has shown serious problems with his judgement, and he has alienated huge blocks of the Democratic base.

I have written to Obama Super Delegate Senator McCaskill, asking her for the good of the entire party to reconsider her support for Obama before he drags the entire ticket down this November. Everyone who is concerned about her endorsement should contact her office asap!

This is amazing. In this day and age, 2008, 40 years since they killed Martin Luther King and RFK, 45 years since they killed JFK, and we are still afraid. Well, maybe because of these incidents, we remain afraid.

HIllary and Bill Clinton (they are a two-for-one package) offer nothing new. Bill wants a "do-over" because he blew it the last time. Hillary is his ticket.

Do any of us want to pretend that Hillary is just Hillary - and that Bill is not part of the package?

If voters are scared away because of some harsh words by a pastor that came of age in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, then I guess real change is not possible. The fearmongers have won.

Gunnar

I guess we can all agree now that words DO matter. While I think it is patently unfair to reduce a man's lifetime of words to a few sound bytes, I recognize this has touched a nerve.
We would all do well to learn to speak nonviolently about our most heartfelt feelings, especially when it comes to faith. I grew up in a church that said everyone except us was damned. We still hear talk on the news about infidels, crusades, and the wrath of God through catastrophe.
Gandhi said, "I like your Christ. It's you Christians I have trouble with." I wrote to Trinity Church and asked if Dr. Wright would have encouraged more progress if he had said, "May God have mercy on America" The response was positive. (By the way, listen to Rev.Wright's "The Audacity to Hope" and check out the Trinity Church website. It will calm you.)
Instead of judgment and fear, let's start the conversation about what it will take to heal us.

Cap69 cannot be a Democrat. He/she writes with too much intelligence

Found this on the web...

Obama's judgment: Wright or Wrong

By now everyone has seen some of the exceedingly provocative clips from Mr. Wright's (Obama's pastor) sermons. As an Obama supporter I am assailed by the following questions/confusions regarding the fallout of this episode. I have tried my hardest (believe me it's been excruciatingly hard) to objectively confront the implications of our candidate's relationship with his pastor. I persuaded myself to face these questions by telling myself that one is nothing if one is not intellectually honest:

1. There is an undeniable close knit 20 year relationship between the pastor and Obama. I gather, the Pastor married Barrack and Michelle, baptized his children, dedicated Obama's house, has been his "sounding board" for all that time. The title of Obama's book "Audacity of Hope" is from the Pastor's sermon. From WSJ I gather, the Pastor was one of the first people Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in 2004. That, Obama consulted him before deciding to run for president and prayed privately with him before announcing his candidacy last year. How can one distance oneself from this deep and this long a relationship? That would be akin to trying to distance yourself from half your life. Won't it?

2. The Pastor called US the number one killer, held US responsible for AIDS/9-11/Mandela's imprisonment and apartheid/Palestinian plight/killing of innocents to bring down Castro & Libya - I mean, it goes on and on over, not one or two, but several sermons. How do you explain how you presumably sat through such incendiary sermons with your family? Or, at a minimum, continued having a spiritual relationship despite such rhetoric?

3. Then I read that these clips directly contradict some of the things Obama has been saying about the pastor. It seems Obama said clearly that he does not regard his church to be "controversial". While addressing the Jewish Leaders he apparently explained his pastor's anti-Zionist statements as being rooted in Israel's support for South Africa when it seems those statements were never qualified as that. I don't know if anyone has more insights on this.

4. Our candidate's primary counterpoint to Hillary's Experience has been his Judgment. If people question his judgment for keeping close kinship with someone who was asking God to damn America, how will he respond? What will he say?

5. Obama's candidacy is significantly based on his crossover appeal. That is, his appeal to Republicans and Independents. He may yet get the nomination but is his appeal not fatally compromised? How can he hold on to the mantle of being the less divisive candidate while having an unapologetic 20 year spiritual relationship with such a radical preacher? I feel so hopeless about this point. I mean, how would we feel if McCain was taking his family most Sundays to Jerry Falwell's discourses?

6. Obama's appeal to the young and the "latte liberals" has been his fresh-faced sincerity and honesty. To me, I know, that has been his primary appeal. Now, how do I reconcile this with what his detractors will call: the hypocrisy of calling, say, Ferraro as divisive? I mean what is more divisive than the things the Pastor said about "white folks", even clearly lambasting Europeans.

7. Of all the incendiary things one can say about race and society and country where is an Obama supporter or surrogate who now has the moral high ground to accuse the opponent's surrogates for being divisive. What is disheartening here is that Obama has forever ceded that high ground to Clinton/McCain.

I may be wrong - do persuade me that I am. It is very hard for me to vote for Hillary but now I am thinking about the general election and finding it really hard to figure out how Obama can keep his constituencies, his image of being a uniter. How can he? I am seeing those Republican ads running day and night showing a montage of all the different ways this Pastor has denounced America and Europeans and Israel, punctuated by Obama in his own words: "I don't think actually that my church is particularly controversial". I mean, Judgment, Moderation, Sincerity - can they be Obama's defining pillars anymore? This is so disheartening. Where do we go from here?