Obama's hyped speech may produce backlash, refusal to renounce mentor/pastor Wright a factor

jackson_dem

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Sat Mar-22-08 09:03 PM
Original message

Obama's hyped speech may produce backlash, refusal to renounce mentor/pastor Wright a factor

Edited on Sat Mar-22-08 09:15 PM by jackson_dem

This is exactly why his advisers didn't want him to give the speech. It appealed to the Starbucks crowd, of which the msm is part of, but not with the Budweiser crowd. The problem is Obama already has no margin of error with whites, which makes his recent racial remark even more important. He is at 23% with whites in PA, 30% in NC, and around 25% in West Virginia (fresh off of getting 21% in MS and 34% in Ohio, with the latter figure boosted by rethugs and indies. Among white Democrats in Ohio he got only 27%. In Texas he got 44% but that was also inflated by rethugs and indies. Among Democrats he got only 37%.). The problem for Obama is they are three out of four general election voters and a large majority of Democratic primary voters as well. He also lost Latinos 66-32 in Texas and that was well before pastorgate. Many Latinos are first or second generation and hearing "god damn America" won't sit well with folks who chose or whose parents chose America.

-snip-

A week ago, her customers at Rauchut’s Tavern in Tacony didn’t have much to say about Barack Obama. But when she returned to work Wednesday, a day after the Illinois senator attempted to quell the furor over his pastor’s racially incendiary remarks, the reaction inside the corner bar was raw and unapologetic.

-snip-

And his speech Tuesday, although widely praised by the pundit caste and Obama supporters, has only seemed to widen the gulf with the Budweiser class here.

-snip-

A day after the speech, local residents were left wondering whether Obama was candid in the last week when he said he hadn’t heard any of Wright’s most objectionable remarks, but then said Tuesday that he had heard “controversial” remarks while sitting in the pews.

-snip-

“I don’t want to hear that you are blaming us for him saying this,” said Peter, who is white and worked at an auto parts factory until it was shuttered several years ago. Cutting ties with the church “would have been the best way to do it. That way, I could have been able to listen to him again.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9132_Page2.html

Some points:

1) The polling data shows no change of any significance for him after The Hype, er, "the speech." If anything he has went down slightly since then.

2) This article provides a good window into the real world that the blogosphere, an alternate world where Wright (8% favorable rating in the real world) is more popular than Hillary Clinton, was unable to grasp after the hyped speech. The article shows how many folks reacted to it. His failure to renounce Wright, brushed off as irrelevant here, is important to some people in the real world. Where the Starbucks crowd and Obamites saw vision and leadership, many working folks saw hypocrisy, lies, and finger pointing (at them).

3) There is a lot of talk here about "My ___ was 'moved' by the speech" or "I didn't support Obama until he gave the greatest speech ever." There may even be some of that in the real world. Still his numbers didn't move up. That goes to the article. Whatever he gained, assuming that happened and it likely did, was offset by losses among other folks, especially working folks who Obama has always struggling with anyway, with a few states that were exceptions.

4) There is an unusually high focus on the racial breakdown of voters this time. Part of this is due to the obvious. Most of it, though, is because for the first time, aside from Jesse Jackson's brief time as front-runner at this time in 1988, the Democratic front-runner does not have broad support that cuts across racial lines. Obama is unique in that he wins only one racial group, but fortunately for him thus far he has enjoyed 85-90% support among that group (although even that may be slipping. One PA poll has Clinton getting 27% black support.) and that offsets Clinton's smaller margins among whites, Latinos, and Asians in many states.

5) If pastorgate stung, his racial remark if it gets covered by the msm in the primaries will be even worse (and if they don't cover it now they definitely will in the general election). That quote will be in every rethug ad in the fall if he is the nominee.