Would you like to hear what's really going on with Wright-Gate and why it helps Obama?

Political Heretic

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Fri Mar-14-08 11:50 PM
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Would you like to hear what's really going on with Wright-Gate and why it helps Obama?

There is so much drama around this issue on all sides that we are losing all perspective. Everyone is - in camp Clinton and camp Obama alike. If we all could just take sixty seconds to take in several slow, deep breaths through the nose and slowly exhale out through the mouth.

Great. Now - let's do some political analysis like mature grown-ups, shall we? What I want to focus on is how the Wright thing effects the Obama campaign, and why its actually a positive for them. But first, I need to say this:

If you expect me, a long time radical leftist and well educated in American political history, to reject the content of Wrights statements (those that I have seen in the media to date) you're crazy. The same content has come from Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Howard Zinn and other brilliant radicals who additionally provide mountains of documentation, references, scholarly research and other historical evidence to substantiate their facts.

The problem for Obama is that Wright's delivery overshadows the content itself. And unfortunately, the real issue isn't about whether the specific statements are true or false / fair or unfair. The issue is that it creates a political perception problem. Obama has no "real" problem. But politics isn't reality-based. Obama has a perception problem thanks to the inflammatory style of Wrights rhetoric.

A quick one-paragraph side-note: The sad thing here is that I view statements by Ferraro as far, far worse than anything said by Wright. But that's not going to get any traction anywhere because he comes off far more un-hinged while speaking. So Ferraro basically gets away with worse behavior that was right in the middle and heart of the campaign, while months old comments already repudiated by a retiring preacher with no significant campaign role are dominating the news.

Now, the question is: How does the Wright perception problem really effect the Obama campaign?

The answer is, inside the Obama War Room they should be high-fiving themselves celebrating the fact that they have just been handed a huge, huge blessing. Sound strange? Consider this:

These Wright videos were going to come out at some point, and they were going to be used by Obama's enemies to manufacture a guilt-by-association perception problem. Unfortunately for the GOP, somebody pulled the trigger too soon (namely Sean Hannity). I would really like to give credit and link to another DUer thread which pointed out that the GOP wanted to save this for the general election, and was very unhappy that this story was being played out now in March. Thanks to the timing of this story, it breaks far, far too early to do the kind of damage the GOP would want it to do. Think about it:

Kerry's Swiftboating happened in August, leaving him very little time to do much about it before the Election. He should have done more, but still it happened right at the home stretch of the campaign race.

The American public have an incredibly short political attention span. By breaking this in March, and by having Obama immediately getting control of the story, it peaks way too early. Will GOP 527s try to use it in the general. Of course they will, which means if you know they are already going to do that, this is what you want to happen. You want all the shock and sensationalism dumped into the media as early as possible, giving you all the time in the world to dismiss it and downplay it. Obama has seven months between the breaking of this smear campaign against him and the general - and the one thing every poll consistently tells us - whether some like it or not - is that the more people hear Obama, the more they like him.

-- Even Clinton has to be disappointed with the timing. It happened too early. It helped detract away from the actual racism of Ferraro's multiple comments, but other than that - it was not close enough to the Pennsylvania Primary to be very effective.

Basically, Hannity and others stole all the GOP's thunder. People keep thinking that somehow Clinton's attacks on Obama are helping the GOP. They are not. It's not like the GOP are getting ideas from Clinton that they wouldn't have had other wise.

But instead, every single one of the GOPS best hits against Obama are being fired way too early When Obama gets hit with everything including the Kitchen Sink in March, and goes on to win the nomination anyway, the GOP is left with nothing sensational and a feeling of "well, now what?". It is so much better to get a preview of what they would have wanted to "shock" America with in August RIGHT NOW and respond to it and move on. It's one of the best gifts Obama could hope for.

Try to keep this in mind over the next few weeks.