if Obama's candidacy can be ensured by making a good speech....

My concern about all this is for all the talk about "this speech needs to be successful" how in hell are we going to measure that ?
The media's reaction ? Hardly objective. I want to believe they will cover this favorably because they WANT this to be an historic race but they also want him to be a horserace.
I am sure it will be clearer in a few hours but I am still stunned that everybody went from "This is a potential problem in the GE" to "This is a do-or-die speech that his whole candidacy is hanging on" in just a couple days.
Silly.

The problem with this is that maybe 2% of the population will see his entire speech and they will likely be convinced by it. 20% might see snippets of his speech that MSM or CNN or FOX deem relevent (or which, taken out of context, make him look worse). Another x% will simply see a headline which may be very misleading. For precedent, see the long interviews he gave with the Tribune and Sun Times about Rezko. The conclusion the papers had was that he'd successfully and thoroughly explained his relationship. The headlines I saw were "Obama ties to Rezko deeper than previously admitted" etc.

Wright's rant (and Obama's ascendancy generally) is exposing some deeply conflicted feelings many blacks have about "America" the symbol. Obama has to make history by both acknowledging the history of these African-American sentiments and sowing the means for Americans en masse to accept and transcend it.

Obama holds a lead among college-educated whites (like myself) because we have seen this coming and already have an accepting understanding, whereas non-college-educated whites (like many of my relatives) will, while not being wholly racist, have great difficulty reconciling the vitriol they hear from Wright with the idea that Obama is himself mainstream enough to represent all of America. It is a legitimate philosophical question.

Of course anyone with enough perspective on Obama understands he CAN represent all of America, but he has to seize the Wright problem, articulate better how he transcends the radical Wright perspective, and ensure the confidence of the broad swath of Americans. Its a big challenge, but it is part of what he had to know would be an inevitable dimension of his path to the presidency.

I certainly hope Obama can turn this to his favor. I'm not optimistic, though.

Here is a link to his speech today, surprisingly from Drudge

http://www.drudgereport.com/flashos.htm

Speech on Drudge is too long and won't kill this issue. Language like this doesn't answer anything.

"For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time."

No way this works.

It does not matter what BO spews today, it is over.

Yet, his supporters will swallow his radical bs like the bushies do with w.

Time to jump aboard the Clinton machine to crush McKook.

Off topic, but make sure to check out there very interesting articles about Obama the man and his wonderful amazing mother:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/politics/14obama.html?_r=1

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0314obamamar14,0,7185898.story

Obama do tell the truth today.

And he not able to undos the prejudice of people like you.

What I've heard so far:

1. It is everyone else's fault. White America is to blame.

2. Yes, I heard the hate

3. I have been a happy member and friend for over 20 years

4. No, I did not and do not quit the church, community, and friendship.

Okay. It is not our problem. It is yours Mr. Obama. You chose a racist, America hating church as an adult choice. Yes, you are judged by the choices you make and fail especially by blaming everyone else.

Maybe this just testifies to the extent to which I am already very far gone for Obama, but I thought that this speech was brilliant and beautiful. I thought that it addressed exactly the concerns that needed addressing and did it in a masterful way (which is to say, it was peppered with attractive, 10 second sound-byte material which will get a lot of play on the evening news).

That said, I rather wonder about who the folks are who are alienated by the Wright story. Specifically, I wonder how often these folks who are put off by Wright attend their own churches (or other religious assemblies)? I ask because I am a very regular church-goer (I go to Mass somewhere between 4 and 6 days a week). As such, I am quite familiar with the phenomenon of a pastor for whom one might feel a great deal of affection even when one frequently disagrees with the individual. To my mind, the question "why would he keep going to a church like that?" makes no more sense than to ask "why would he continue to belong to that family?". I dare say that if the folks who claimed in yesterday's survey that they were less likely to vote for Obama on account of Wright are regular church goers themselves, then this speech will completely allay any concerns that they might have had. If there are not many church goers in that group of respondants, however, then maybe more work will be required to respond to their concerns.

Greg,

I find your headline much too simple.

SERMON
The Audacity to Hope
Jeremiah Wright
http://tinyurl.com/yp5xqm

Read it.

It's not hard to find audio and transcripts of entire sermons on of Rev Wright the web. I've read and listened to them. They aren't racist, anti-American at all. Sometimes Wright talks about oppression and pain, usually with reference to the history of racism in this country.

Don't base your whole assessment of his preaching on the 45 seconds of clips shown on TV, and some vague sense that there are "hours" more.
I'm telling you now, I'm not seeing those other hours, and I've looked pretty hard. Everything else I've seen or read has been pretty focused on Jesus, and applying the lessons of Jesus to daily life.