On the practical question—did it work?—the answer appears to be: yes and no. Yes, as regards the Democratic primary; Hillary Clinton’s campaign is still trying to leverage the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright Jr. against Sen. Obama, trying to convince superdelegates to line up behind her and throw the nomination her way, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen—Bill Richardson, former Clinton cabinet official and current governor of New Mexico, just endorsed Sen. Obama. It’s a pretty powerful indicator, as PowerLine’s Scott Johnson notes, that the Democratic Party establishment really wants to put the Clintons behind them; Sen. Obama just needed to do enough to allay their concerns to get enough support to put him over the top. He’s been hurt by this whole situation, and he hasn’t really repaired all the damage, but at least he’s avoided derailment.
As regards the general election, though, that’s another matter; and based on the current poll average, where he remains slightly behind John McCain (and significantly behind in certain battleground states) and isn’t regaining ground—if anything, he’s losing a little—it doesn’t look like the speech helped him, at least to this point. Part of the problem is that his name remains tied to the Rev. Dr. Wright’s in many people’s minds; perhaps a bigger problem is that where he was trying to rise above the issue of race, to offer the American people a different bargain, that has collapsed; what Bill Clinton tried to do in South Carolina—to make Sen. Obama “the black candidate”—Sen. Obama has now effectively done to himself. Instead of “come transcend race with me,” his pitch now is, “come talk more about race and about what whites have to do to make things right with blacks.” That will work just fine in winning Democratic votes, but when it comes to attracting Republicans and independents . . . not so much.
This is only reinforced by the sense I’m getting that a lot of people are having the same reaction I am to Sen. Obama’s speech: the more we think about it, the less well certain things sit with us—Sen. Obama throwing his grandmother under the bus, his offering justifications for the Rev. Dr. Wright’s hateful language at the same time as he condemned it, and, fundamentally, the fact that he dodged the fundamental question: if you’re really about what you say you’re about, Senator, why attend that church? Why stay? As Charles Krauthammer asks,
If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? . . . Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?
So far, only the crickets have answered; and that’s just not good enough.
I thought the speech was incredibly brilliant.
I agree, it was brilliant, and I think the chances are good that it will prove an important speech in the history of this country. There are, however, other concerns operative here as well. Viewed in isolation as a speech about race, it’s one thing; as a response to Sen. Obama’s association with the Rev. Dr. Wright, it’s something else.