Politics

Where the Race Stands

By Matt Cooper

Been off being a parent instead of a blogger so let me weigh in belatedly on the tumultuous week. I thought Obama's speech had some elegant touches--lots of patriotism, a lot of uplift, not a dark vision of American as endemically racist. I thought there was some degree of sophistry as Mickey Kaus has noted. and intellectual inconsistency. I thought the media swoon was breathtaking. Can't decide if Chris Matthew's better-than-King comment was more over the top of Roger Cohen's saying it was "pitch perfect." In any event, I'm not sure it ended the pastor issue so much as draw attention to it. My own take is that you'd have to be grossly unfair to think that Obama is a hater and a proponent of the views Wright expressed but you also have to be intellectually incurious to ask why Mr. Dialogue didn't have a chat with his pastor about these comments. I also thought the Grandma analogy to be more than strained. We don't choose our grandparents; Obama chose this pastor and has been none-too-gently distancing himself from him, starting with canceling his speaking gig at his announcement in Springfield, Illinois last year. They knew they had a problem; they chose not to really deal with it; now they've dealt with it by wrapping it in a larger conversation about race. Not sure it worked. It probably doesn't matter. I tend to share the take offered in Politico that this race is really pretty much over. How can Clinton overcome the delegate gap? I haven't heard a good answer.

Obama did end the week on a nice grace note with a firm rebuttal to the 3 A.M. ad that my spouse made for Clinton. The young girl used in the stock footage in the Clinton ad is now old enough to vote and is a precinct captain for Obama. Still cherubic, her YouTube video is a slick bit of jujitsu See it below:

Full post as published by Portfolio.com: Capital on March 21, 2008 (boomark / email).