Obama Dumps Wright

Like I was sayin… some times you have to keep your enemies close and your friends farther away.  Today, presidential candidate Barack Obama strongly denounced his preacher and his recent comments in an attempt to distance himself from his spiritual adviser.

Earlier this week, Wright seemed to be emboldened by Obama’s lack of condemnation of his remarks as he spoke before the the press.  During his performance, he stuck by his assertions that the U.S. is an imperialist nation, that the U.S. invented the AIDS virus as a means of minority genocide, and stated that Obama came out against some of his remarks only because he has to say such things as a politician.

Today in a speech Obama voiced a strong condemnation for the comments by Wright:

“I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,”

Obama then went on to distance himself from his now former preacher:

“What became clear to me is that he was presenting a world view that contradicts who I am and what I stand for,” Obama said. “And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I’m about knows that I am about trying to bridge gaps and I see the commonality in all people.”

One has to wonder why he waited so long before coming out against the comments of Wright.  Did his advisers suddenly get through to him, was it the loss in PA, or was it the advice of Dick Morris?  Or was it that the reverend decided to come out and further hurt Obama by association?  More than likely it was a combination of all of the above.

However, did Obama’s condemnation come too late?  Nationally, things have become a little tighter in the Clinton / Obama race since Clinton’s PA win.  Will be be interesting to see if this recent effort to distance himself from Wright will have any impact on the polls and future primaries.

Hillary Admits Obama Can Win

(April 16, 2008 ) – Like I was sayin… some people can’t make up their minds.  For several months part of Hillary Clinton’s argument about why she should be the Dem nominee is that she had a better chance than Barack Obama at beating the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

The facts are somewhat different.  For several months, many polls show McCain beating Clinton by as many as 12 points.  Other polls have shown Clinton winning by as many as 5 percentage points.  Currently, the Real Clear Politics average has has McCain up by 2.6%

The same polls show McCain over Obama by as many as 6 points, but with Obama over McCain by as many as 12 points.  The current Real Clear Politics average has Obama over McCain by 0.6%

The raw numbers show Obama with a better chance of beating McCain than Clinton.  However, a convincing argument can be made that both the Dem candidates are in a statistical tie with John McCain.

Tonight in the first Dem debate in several months, Clinton stated when asked if Obama could win in the fall, “Yes, yes, yes”.

It would seem that over the last few weeks when given the chance, the Dem candidates often weaken their own argument as to why they should be the Dem nominee.

At one point, Obama was almost assured the Dem nomination.  However, his recent statements about small town voters have hurt him and will force uncommitted super delegates to look again at Clinton.  The next few weeks should prove to be interesting in the race for the Dem nomination.

More calls for Hilliary to drop out

(March 29, 2008) – Like I was sayin… it ain’t over until the lady sings.  More and more prominent democrats are calling for Hillary Clinton end her campaign for the dem nomination.

In the last few days, several prominent democrats have urged Clinton to bow out clearing the way for an Obama nomination.  Senator Chris Dodd and Senator Patrick Lehey have both indicated that they believe there is no way for Clinton to secure the nomination and have called for her to end her campaign. 

This week, speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi urged the “super delegates” to back whomever has the most popular votes.  The DNC chairman, Howard Dean, has called for the “super delegates” to declare which candidate they support by July 1st in an effort to avoid a nasty convention floor battle.

Clinton has vowed to keep up the fight even to the floor of the DNC convention.  The DNC would like to avoid a nasty fight which would turn off independents as well as some dem voters.  However, Clinton will not bow out so easily.

John McCain seems to be benefiting from this the most.  As the two dem candidates continue to take shots at each other, they unwittingly provide McCain ammunition for the general election.  This week, Clinton put forth the argument that Obama has received the most cash from companies involved in the sub-prime mortgage business.  That is debatable depending upon how you slice the data, but in any case, McCain received the least cash from those companies compared to Clinton and Obama.

It will be interesting to see how far the dems are willing to drag their party down in order to secure the nomination.

Obama says “No thank you”

(March 11, 2008) – Like I was sayin… sometimes you can trick them, other times you can’t.

Several times over the weekend I saw stories about Hillary Clinton hinting at having Obama be the VP should she become the nominee.  I thought this was rather odd being that she is behind in both the popular vote and in the delegate count.

I got a kick out of Obama’s response since I don’t normally agree with him on anything.  Hillary seemed to have served up a slow ball that Obama knocked out of the park.  He even asked “If I am not ready, how is it that you think I would be such a great VP?”.

Today in the WSJ I read an article that Hillary’s campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson responded to the that question.  He basically said that Obama isn’t ready to be president yet, but it is a long time between now and the convention.  Are they going to keep pitching the Obama campaign slow balls?  What they are saying is basically he isn’t ready to be president yet, but he could be by November if he agrees to be the VP.  I don’t have the ability to read the future, but I bet I know what the next few Obama campaign adds are going to say.

 I believe that the Clinton campaign was trying to reach out to those who are undecided by indicating that if you can’t make up your mind, vote for Clinton and you get both.  It will be interesting to see how they try to come back from this blunder.  She may have inadvertently pushed some independents to look more closely at McCain.