Will Wright Do Obama Wrong?

Hillary Clinton’s aides say their candidate’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination grow ever slimmer, the New York Times reports, and she will need victories in Pennsylvania and the national popular vote—as well as a confidence-shaking event in Barack Obama's camp—to succeed. She can't likely overtake Obama without re-votes in Michigan and Florida, and the Jeremiah Wright flap is cooling. More »

After scrounging for ways to combat Barack Obama's appeal, Republican strategists now believe Rev. Jeremiah Wright is the perfect play to drag the Democrat through the mud in the general election. Said one of the inflammatory Wright clips making the rounds, “You start getting some sense of who he is and it’s not the Obama you thought—he’s not the Tiger Woods of politics.” More »

Barack Obama’s milestone speech on race today covered a lot of ground, and first reactions vary from laudatory on the left to unsatisfied on the right: Greg Sargent of Talking Points Memo says the candidate went “big big big” by making his story a “realization of American history.” His defense of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was "a break with political precedent, in that he's asking voters to look beyond the cartoon of controversy to see a more complex picture." More »

Barack Obama tackled the issue of race in a candid and risky speech this morning, recounting America’s racial history and acknowledging both black anger and white resentment “we’ve never really worked through.” He denounced the divisive statements of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying they "denigrate the goodness and the greatness of our nation," but he said he could "no more disown him" than he could his own white grandmother, who sometimes succumbed to racial stereotypes. More »

Black pastors and parishioners—including the 3,000 who packed Trinity Church in Chicago Sunday—are leaping to the defense of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who's drawn a firestorm of criticism for his incendiary rhetoric on racism, the Washington Post reports. A pamphlet circulating the pews decried Wright’s treatment in the media as a “modern-day lynching.” “We are all being vilified,” the new pastor said. “This is an attack on the African American church tradition.” More »

Barack Obama will deliver a major speech on race and politics in America in Philadelphia this morning. The candidate will address the racial issues that have dominated the campaign in recent days, fueled by the firestorm over the divisive remarks of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor. An aide told the Chicago Tribune that the Illinois senator's speech will be "very candid." More »

Barack Obama’s campaign uninvited his controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright from speaking at his candidacy announcement last year, reports the Los Angeles Times . The campaign didn’t want to "make him the target and a distraction on a day when Senator Obama was going to announce his candidacy," said David Axelrod, the candidate's chief strategist. Obama waited until last week before formally distancing himself from the head of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. More »

Jeremiah Wright, the militant Chicago minister and spiritual adviser to Barack Obama, is off the senator’s campaign, CNN reports. Wright will no longer sit on the senator’s African-American Religious Leadership Committee, the campaign announced. Obama has often said he rejects the reverend’s more incendiary opinions, especially his comment that the US deserved the 9/11 attacks. But yesterday the candidate went further, calling some old sermons that have come to light this week "inflammatory and appalling." More »

In the latest campaign preacher flap, TV networks are airing clips from sermons in which the former pastor of Barack Obama's church condemns "racist" US society and compares the candidate's experiences to Jesus' struggles, the Guardian reports. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human," said the fiery pastor who presided over Obama's marriage, baptized his kids, and provided the title of his biography. He also once described the 9/11 attacks as "America's chickens coming home to roost." More »

Barack Obama's home church in Chicago may be risking its tax-exempt status by promoting the candidate in sermons. Churches are allowed to support specific causes, but not candidates, and some experts say the praise—and attacks on Hillary Clinton— violate IRS laws. "There does seem to be a pattern of attempting to tip the scales," a law professor tells the Wall Street Journal. More »

Barack Obama’s controversial pastor is back in the press—and the blogosphere—this time for praising Louis Farrakhan in an issue of the church's magazine, calling him "an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose." The Washington Post's Richard Cohen has a beef with heralding the "integrity and honesty" of the man he deems an archetypal anti-Semite, and says Obama must distance himself. More »

The Times retraces Barack Obama's peripatetic path to the Christianity he embraced 20 years ago and now invokes as he presents his presidential campaign in nothing short of biblical terms. Obama's mother was an anthropologist who schooled her son in the variety of religious experiences; his father's family in Kenya is Muslim. More »