Who will (not should) be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008?

[Glengoyne]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

... the issue is done and it wasn't that big a deal to begin with, no matter how many folks who can't, weren't planning to or won't vote for him refuse to admit it.

Done? I was hearing about this on NPR on my way home last night. In fact they quit merely saying that Wright had made inflamatory statements, and finally started playing the sound bytes.

This isn't over. If NPR has gotten off of the fence on that side of the issue. I don't think it is off of the radar today.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Rarely, if ever, (I can't think of any, but I'm only waffling because I don't know for sure), has a politician's name ever come up at a church function I have attended, let alone in the preacher's sermon.

+1

And I'm even more confident about the "never" part.

[larrymcg421]

Breaking news from CNN: Hillary Clinton's passport file was breached in 2007.

[CamEdwards]

Originally Posted by Arles

I agree here. If you look at a vast majority of "anti-Bush" leaks, they come from the state department. Of all the areas within the administration to see a republican-based spying effort, the state department would be the last place I would look.

Well, we DID see it back in 1992, but that was a Republican political appointee as opposed to contract employees like we have here.

I know they're out there, but I have yet to meet a Republican civil servant or bureaucrat since I moved here. And considering I run in largely conservative social circles, that's kinda surprising.

[Cringer]

Not going to church makes sure you are not taken down by your own preacher.

[st.cronin]

Michigan apparently won't be re-doing their primary, either.

[Grammaticus]

Now they are reporting that Mcain's passport file was breached too.

[st.cronin]

Clearly, agents of Ralph Nader are behind this.

[Vegas Vic]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

I wouldn't be too shocked to learn the people involved are actually Hillary supporters. It's certainly possible that these were Republicans, but I don't think you can automatically assume that at this point.

All three presidential candidates had their passport files breached. The conspiracy theorists need to move on to something else.

[Passacaglia]

So I'm assuming it's just some curious folks passing the time. When I was a freshman at Michigan I worked for the Admissions office, and I looked up information on just about everyone I knew -- so I can understand.

[Cringer]

Maybe it's Ron Paul and Nader teaming up to form a super secret alliance. It happens on Big Brother.

[rkmsuf]

Maybe this is from the brilliant mind of Aston Kutcher and they are getting punked.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Vegas Vic

All three presidential candidates had their passport files breached. The conspiracy theorists need to move on to something else.

No, I just read a post elsewhere that the McCain thing was either made up or purposely done to make it LOOK like it wasn't targeting the Dems.

[Arles]

My money's on a secret coalition between Mitt Romney and John Edwards to retake the presidency as the real "dream ticket".

[Young Drachma]

Roland Martin makes some good points here.

[miked]

I think he also posted somewhere the entire 9/11 speech given by the Pastor just to show how out of context everything was, and how the speech was basically about violence breeding violence (our violence towards Native Americans, Mexicans, Japanese-nuke, etc). But, some people want to make it a straw man and bring the focus away from a never ending war and sagging economy. Not that any of the candidates has really gone in to detail on anything...

[cartman]

Originally Posted by miked

I think he also posted somewhere the entire 9/11 speech given by the Pastor just to show how out of context everything was, and how the speech was basically about violence breeding violence (our violence towards Native Americans, Mexicans, Japanese-nuke, etc). But, some people want to make it a straw man and bring the focus away from a never ending war and sagging economy. Not that any of the candidates has really gone in to detail on anything...

This is a YouTube link to the full sermon (about 10 minutes long):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ

[Ksyrup]

The 9/11 speech doesn't contain any of the comments I've been reading about or specifically objected to. It doesn't even have the GD America comment, which is what I thought started this whole thing. How does this speech become the focal point on Wright?

[rkmsuf]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

The 9/11 speech doesn't contain any of the comments I've been reading about or specifically objected to. It doesn't even have the GD America comment, which is what I thought started this whole thing. How does this speech become the focal point on Wright?

does he talk about the aids stuff?

[Ksyrup]

The only AIDS-related comment I recall from that speech was something about how little money the government is spending on AIDS research, education, and healthcare, yet they just paid out $40B to rebuild NY.

[Galaril]

Well, Richardson's endorsement of Obama is helpful but maybe not as much in PA as Edwards would.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Galaril

Well, Richardson's endorsement of Obama is helpful but maybe not as much in PA as Edwards would.

I sorta see it at this point to being likened to a situation where you sign a player so your opponent can't. The rumor on the street is Edwards to Clinton, but conventional wisdom was Richardson to Clinton due to the ties. Maybe he's waiting until after the primary there? Who knows what he's doing. Maybe he's changing his chameleon outfit again.

[CamEdwards]

Interesting story on the black liberation theology I mentioned earlier. Frankly, I'm glad to see a newspaper talk about this rather than comb through more sermons from Rev. Wright or Rev. Moss. It'll be interesting to see how many of the McClatchy papers run this and how many other press entities use it as a springboard for stories of their own.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/v-print/story/31079.html

WASHINGTON — Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation.

Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama's church.

Obama's speech Tuesday on race in America was hailed as a masterful handling of the controversy over divisive sermons by the longtime pastor of Trinity United, the recently retired Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

But in repudiating and putting in context Wright's inflammatory lines about whites and U.S. foreign policy, the Democratic presidential front-runner didn't address other potentially controversial facts about his church and its ties.

Wright has said that a basis for Trinity's philosophies is the work of James Cone, who founded the modern black liberation theology movement out of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Particularly influential was Cone's seminal 1969 book, "Black Theology & Black Power."

Cone wrote that the United States was a white racist nation and the white church was the Antichrist for having supported slavery and segregation.

Today, Cone, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, stands by that view, but also makes clear that he doesn't believe that whites individually are the Antichrist.

In an interview, Cone said that when he was asked which church most embodied his message, "I would point to that church (Trinity) first." Cone also said he thought that Wright's successor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, would continue the tradition.

Obama, 46, who's biracial, joined Trinity in his late twenties when he worked as a community organizer. He says he'll continue to worship there.

He and other Chicagoans have praised Trinity's role as a melting pot that brings together blacks and some whites from all levels of wealth and education, boasts a joyous and energetic choir, and is deeply involved in community work, such as helping the homeless, the incarcerated and those touched by HIV and AIDS.

But Trinity has a history. Its affiliation with the United Church of Christ makes it part of a liberal, mostly white denomination that was the first in America to ordain gays, women and blacks as ministers.

Trinity goes further, embracing black liberation theology and its emphasis on empowering oppressed groups against establishment forces.

In that and related doctrines, the church and some of its guiding thinkers at times have been socially ahead of the curve and other times outside the mainstream of American religious and political thought.

For example, the 8,000-member congregation embraces the idea that Jesus was black. It's historically supported left-wing social and foreign policies, from South Africa to Latin America to the Middle East.

Wright, who hasn't been giving interviews since the controversy broke, told conservative TV talk-show host Sean Hannity last year that Trinity's black value system also had parallels to the liberation theology of laypeople in Nicaragua three decades ago. There, liberation theology became associated with Marxist revolution and the Sandinistas, and split the Roman Catholic Church.

White America today embraces Nelson Mandela, and he won the Nobel peace prize. But in the early 1980s, when the U.S. government considered Mandela's anti-Apartheid African National Congress a terrorist organization because of its support from communists and use of violence, Trinity became one of the first U.S. churches to support the group.

It isn't clear where Obama's beliefs and the church's diverge. Through aides, Obama declined requests for an interview or to respond to written questions about his thoughts on Jesus, Cone or liberation theology. Trinity officials also didn't respond to requests.

Obama's Illinois state and U.S. Senate voting records and his speeches suggest that, if elected president, he'd take a liberal but mainstream line and seek partisan bridge-building rather than agitation as his style.

It's possible that Obama joined Trinity as much because it gave him credibility as a newcomer to south side Chicago's black community as for its particular theological teachings.

"As a community organizer, would people join Trinity? Yes!" said Dwight Hopkins, a Trinity member and liberation theology professor at the University of Chicago's divinity school. (He said he'd contributed $25 to Obama's campaign.)

However, "someone who wanted to run for public office would think twice about intentionally using Trinity as a leverage," Hopkins said. "When it's Election Day, all the politicians come to Trinity. But not every day."

Cone, the Union professor, said he didn't know Obama personally. He supports his candidacy and considers the senator's worldview as set out in books and speeches "certainly not alien to black theology.

"But it doesn't have as much of a radical edge to it," Cone said of Obama's view. "He couldn't succeed with my message. He speaks less of the hurt and the pain of African-American history. I think his own life has been less of that."

But Cone stands by his message, and sometimes Obama echoes it.

Consider this passage: "Hope is the expectation of that which is not. It is the belief that the impossible is possible, the 'not yet' is coming in history."

Those words sound as if they were pulled from Obama's latest campaign speech. Instead, they're from a memoir Cone wrote in the 1980s. In it, Cone said blacks shouldn't limit their hope to what the Republican and Democratic parties stand for. Then he posited a thought that voters are unlikely to hear from Obama:

"Together, black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society."

Asked about that, Cone said: "I'm not a Marxist. . . . I'm a theologian, and I want to change society. I was searching for my way forward. I want a society in which people have the distribution of wealth, but I don't know how quite to do that institutionally."

He said that the idea of a black Jesus didn't mean Jesus necessarily looked like a black African, but it did rule out Jesus being a white European. More importantly, he said it meant that Jesus "made a solidarity with the (oppressed) people of the land."

Black liberation theology doesn't hold that Africans or black Americans are superior to others. Cone said its concern for the oppressed often allied it with conventional liberal goals.

He argued early on the imperative of supporting women's rights and gay rights. He's said that environmentalism and fighting racism should go hand in hand, as minorities and Third World nations are affected disproportionately by pollution and the environmental costs of capitalism. Civil rights, black liberation and helping the oppressed all share the same values, he said.

"When the Berlin Wall came down, they were saying, 'We shall overcome.' In Tiananmen Square, they were saying, 'We shall overcome.' "

Liberation theology's stance on the rights of Palestinians likewise is informed by its emphasis on seeing God's mission through the lens of oppressed people.

"Black theological liberation is not anti-Israel. It's never been that Zionism is racism," theologian Hopkins said. "It's more for a truly two-state solution."

Still, Hopkins believes, "black theology liberation is to the left of Obama."

On Middle East policy, Obama is strongly pro-Israel. He's rejected an argument voiced by Wright that U.S. support of Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians helped fuel the 9-11 attacks.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

Clearly, agents of Ralph Nader are behind this.

The dastards!

SI

[Noop]

Means nothing I know but I thought it was worth posting.

[cartman]

Is this the thread where we mention that Reagan seriously consulted with astrologers?

[CamEdwards]

Originally Posted by cartman

Is this the thread where we mention that Reagan seriously consulted with astrologers?

Only if we can mention that at the time that was seen as awfully controversial, right?

[cartman]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

Only if we can mention that at the time that was seen as awfully controversial, right?

and then ultimately overlooked, right?

[CamEdwards]

It didn't become a controversy until 1988. Were you expecting a third term?

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16...880516,00.html

Besides which, astrology, while kooky, doesn't claim that the Libra is keeping the Scorpio down, nor does it proclaim that rich white Aries are creating deadly viruses and addictive drugs to give to the Virgos. But I believe the basic point of "I don't find this to be a big deal" vs. "I do find this to be a big deal" has kind of been beaten into the ground. I don't think you can rationally make the statement that "most people don't believe this is a big deal". Obama's poll numbers over the past couple of days indicate it IS a story people are interested in, regardless of how big an issue it will be on Election Day.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

Obama's poll numbers over the past couple of days indicate it IS a story people are interested in, regardless of how big an issue it will be on Election Day.

Like the polls from today that showed a marginal tick up for Obama? Not the free-fall that was expected.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/105559/Ga...Obamas-45.aspx

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

I don't think you can rationally make the statement that "most people don't believe this is a big deal". Obama's poll numbers over the past couple of days indicate it IS a story people are interested in, regardless of how big an issue it will be on Election Day.

I think you can rationalize this because "most people" in the U.S. right now are paying attention to politics in March, and couldn't care less what's going on in the primaries.

It will be all but forgotten or explained away by November.

[Young Drachma]

I haven't heard this discussed anywhere, so I figured to post it anyway.

Politico talks about The Clinton Myth.

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics.

[CamEdwards]

Cartman,

I was actually thinking about the Survey USA polls when I wrote that, but hell, even Gallup notes that Obama's support has fallen from 50% a week ago to a low of 42% (and now back up to 45%). Yes, Obama's taken a hit in his public support no matter how you slice it.

Originally Posted by Vinatieri for Prez

I think you can rationalize this because "most people" in the U.S. right now are paying attention to politics in March, and couldn't care less what's going on in the primaries.

It will be all but forgotten or explained away by November.

I won't waste any energy trying to persuade you otherwise, but I think you're wrong on both counts.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

Roland Martin makes some good points here.

Roland Martin always makes some good point (he's by far my favorite columnist).

[Cringer]

I found this interesting....

[Cringer]

One more, which helps me understand "God Damn America" much better. Nice to see the comments in context.....

The key line is at the end, but the build up makes you understand it, especially the last couple minutes.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Cringer

I found this interesting....

Story

Meet the man who inspired Reverend Jeremiah Wright's now famous tirade about America's foreign policy inciting the terrorist attacks of September 11.

His name is Ambassador Edward Peck. And he is a retired, white, career U.S. diplomat who served 32-years in the U.S. Foreign Service and was chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter -- hardly the black-rage image with which Wright has been stigmatized.

In fact, when Wright took the pulpit to give his post-9/11 address -- which has since become boiled down to a five second sound bite about "America's chickens coming home to roost" -- he prefaced his remarks as a "faith footnote," an indication that he was deviating from his sermon.

"I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday," Wright declared. "He was on Fox News. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true: America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Wright then went on to list more than a few U.S. foreign policy endeavors that, by the tone of his voice and manner of his expression, he viewed as more or less deplorable. This included, as has been demonstrated in the endless loop of clips from his sermon, bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nuking "far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye."

"Violence begets violence," Wright said, "hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism."

And then he concluded by putting the comments on Peck's shoulders: "A white ambassador said that yall, not a black militant, not a reverend who preaches about racism, an ambassador whose eyes are wide open and is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice... the ambassador said that the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them... let me stop my faith footnote right there."

Watch the video (the relevant material starts around the 3:00 mark):

So it seems that while Wright did believe American held some responsibility for 9/11, his views, which have been described as radically outside the political mainstream, were actually influenced by a career foreign policy official.

Who is Peck? The ambassador, who has offered controversial criticism of Israeli policy in the West Bank but also warned against the Iraq War, was lecturing on a cruise ship and was unavailable for comment. But officials at Peck's former organization, the Council for the National Interest, a non-profit group that advocates reducing Israel's influence on U.S. Middle East policy, offered descriptions of the man.

"Peck is very outspoken," said Eugene Bird, who now heads CNI. "He is also very good at making phrases that have a resonance with the American people. When he came off of that Fox News, a few days later he said they would never invite me back again."

And what, exactly, did Peck say in that Fox News interview that inspired Wright's words?

Here are some quotes from an appearance the Ambassador made on the network on October 11, 2001, which may or may not have been the segment Wright was referring to. On the show, Peck said he thought it was illogical to tie Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and that while the then-Iraqi leader had "some very sound and logical reasons not to like [the United States]," he and Osama bin Laden had no other ties.

From there, Peck went on to ascribe motives for what prompted the 9/11 attacks. "Stopping the economic embargo and bombings of Iraq," he said, "things to which Osama bin Laden has alluded as the kinds of things he doesn't like. He doesn't think it's appropriate for the United States to be doing, from his perspective, all the terrible things that he sees us as having been doing, the same way Saddam Hussein feels. So from that perspective, they have a commonality of interests. But they also have a deeply divergent view of the role of Islam in government, which would be a problem."

[Buccaneer]

Ah, a Jimmy Carter connection. Probably says it all.

[Young Drachma]

President of the United Church of Christ at Trinity UCC. Comments might surprise you.

[CamEdwards]

Ward Churchill also used the "chickens are coming home to roost" line too, but I don't think it's fair to characterize it as "pseudo-Native American rage".

Peck is also a "Truther" (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?...1026093059633), so I'm not sure that he adds any legitimacy to Rev. Wright.

It seems to me the tone of that piece is to try to say that since in this case, Wright quoted a white guy, he can't possibly be a racist. But Wright himself took pains to point out that Peck is white. Who the hell cares what color his skin is? This is what I mean about EVERY action or comment having to be seen through the prism of race.

[CamEdwards]

And no, the comments don't surprise me. UCC is a socially liberal church and has been for years. I'm sure the church leadership doesn't see anything particularly controversial about Rev. Wright's comments, nor would they see a need to step in and tell the church what to say. To do so in this case would probably be seen as abhorrent in the context of liberation theology.

[stevew]

I've been wondering why nobody has reported on the Clinton almost ZERO chance of winning the standard delegate count. Even if she takes 60 percent of remaining delegates, she can't beat Barack. And the re-votes would do nothing but further solidify Barack, and may just give him enough votes to clinch the nomination. The rest of the supers aren't going to break 100 percent to her, I mean there's basically no reason she's still in this race. It makes her look more like the egotistical whore that she is.

[JPhillips]

Cam: Since nobody else will answer I'll ask you. What's fundamentally different between saying America's chickens are coming home to roost and blaming 9/11 on our sins and immorality? That's a position held by hundreds of thousands or millions of largely Republican voters.

On church leadership, I think UCC operates roughly the same as The Disciples of Christ. I know we have a lot of connections and I think "management" works the same way. In Disciples churches the idea is that the congregation develops the church. We have wildly liberal and more conservative churches. My church in Silver Spring was multi-racial and politically diverse. One of the big downtown Disciples churches was almost all black and more liberal. If you go farther towards Gaithersburg they're almost all white.

If the UCC works the same way it has much less to do with liberal politics and much more in a fundamental belief in the autonomy of individual churches.

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by CamEdwards

And no, the comments don't surprise me. UCC is a socially liberal church and has been for years. I'm sure the church leadership doesn't see anything particularly controversial about Rev. Wright's comments, nor would they see a need to step in and tell the church what to say. To do so in this case would probably be seen as abhorrent in the context of liberation theology.

In an honest attempt to understand your position on this I am asking these questions. Hopefully it comes out sounding like I mean it, non-confrontational or even biased one way or the other.....

Do you believe the whole speech as it is is still controversial and borderline hate speech? If yes, then what is it that you feel is so wrong about it, that it is in a church? That it is talking about (in an angry tone?) the wrongs of our past to present governments as seen by him (and many others in this country)?

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by stevew

I've been wondering why nobody has reported on the Clinton almost ZERO chance of winning the standard delegate count. Even if she takes 60 percent of remaining delegates, she can't beat Barack. And the re-votes would do nothing but further solidify Barack, and may just give him enough votes to clinch the nomination. The rest of the supers aren't going to break 100 percent to her, I mean there's basically no reason she's still in this race. It makes her look more like the egotistical whore that she is.

By re-votes, I guess you're talking about Michigan and Florida, but I thought they would be expected to break Clinton's way with a re-vote.

[flere-imsaho]

In an interview that will appear in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, controversial televangelist Rev. John Hagee declares, "It's true that [John] McCain's campaign sought my endorsement."

McCain has attempted to distance himself from some of Hagee's views, much as Barack Obama is doing in relation to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But unlike McCain, Obama has not stood on stage with Wright and accepted his accolades this year.

Interviewed by Deborah Solomon, Hagee refused to discuss his statement that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for a gay rights parade in New Orleans, calling it "so far off-base." He claims, "Our church is not hard against the gay people. Our church teaches what the bible teaches, that it is not a righteous lifestyle. But of course we must love even sinners."

Stephen Colbert:

But the real problem here is not whether the Senator attended church, or whether he was aware of his reverend’s views, but how he handled an inflammatory spiritual leader during a presidential campaign. If you want to know how to do it right, ask John McCain. He also has a long-standing and complicated relationship with controversial preachers: Jerry Falwell, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Now I’m not comparing Falwell and Robertson to Jeremiah Wright, after all, the Sunday after September 11th, Rev. Wright said this:

Wright: “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Chickens? Roost? That implies we have the terrorists cooped up in tiny cages for years and we didn’t do that until after 9/11. By comparison, Falwell and Robertson delivered a touching sermon three days after September 11th:

Fallwell: “I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them, who tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’”

Robertson: “I totally concur”

It is even more inspiring than their sermon about the two sets of footprints on the beach. The second set belongs to a gay dude sneaking up on you. Run, Jesus! But like the out of control Rev. Wright, Falwell and Robertson were also condemned by a presidential candidate. During John McCain’s 2000 campaign, he called them both “agents of intolerance.” But before this campaign, McCain did what was necessary to win. Here’s what he said about them this time:

McCain: I believe that the “Christian Right “ has a major role to play in the Republican Party.”

Russert: Do you believe that Jerry Falwell is still an agent of intolerance?

McCain: No, I don’t.

He embraced them. In fact, in 2006, McCain gave the commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University. I’m telling you folks, the man is such a maverick, he is even independent from his own true feelings! McCain was able to cozy up to preachers who say that gays and Satanists are the same thing and it’s a non-issue. I think that Obama’s mistake is that he did it backwards. If he had denounced Rev. Wright years ago, then quietly embraced him for this election, he could have spent the time he wasted on yesterday’s speech focusing on the issues that really matter.

Good stuff. As you were.

[Arles]

got a chuckle out of this:



And, for a little balance on both dem candidates:

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Good stuff. As you were.

Do you find Obama's relationship to Wright as concerning or more concerning compared to McCain's "relationship" with Falwell/Robertson?

[miked]

Originally Posted by Dutch

Do you find Obama's relationship to Wright as concerning or more concerning compared to McCain's "relationship" with Falwell/Robertson?

Unless they are future cabinet members or will be consulting on policy decisions, what does it really matter? Really, all this is getting old and has no bearing on anyone's "fitness" to be president. People can chase this strawman all they want, but this overreaction just hurts the party (part of the reason Hillary has stayed silent). I mean, of course the people who support Bush/McCain will jump all over it, but in the grand scheme of things, nothing this guy said is really that much different from some other guys like Falwell/Robertson.

[Young Drachma]

Why Richardson's endorsement matters