Reflecting on Memorial Day

Memorial Day is technically a day on which we honor those men and women who have died in service to our country. As I enjoyed my day off on Monday, I began thinking that we ought to use it – and every other day for that matter – to honor all of those who have served our country, living and dead, as well as those who are serving our country today.

Last week I flew south for business. I flew into Atlanta, as I have many times in the last several years, and I was again blown away by what I see every single time the escalator arrives at the baggage claim area: dozens of people with signs, flags and banners, there to welcome and celebrate any and every member of our armed services arriving home for what the banners call “Operation R & R”. Think about this for a minute. These are men and women who have taken time out of their own lives to help those soldiers, sailors and marines who are arriving for leave feel welcome and, perhaps more importantly, appreciated.

Several days later, I was set to return home, and I was on a flight out of Pensacola, Florida. On my flight were six active duty sailors, all dressed impeccably in their white uniforms. I should have spoken to the young men, asked them where they were headed or where they were coming from -- or at the very least, thanked them for their service. I didn’t, however, instead focusing on what I then deemed to be a crucial email on my Blackberry. When we landed, the flight attendant set us all straight when, while making her arrival comments over the PA system, she pointed out the sailors on our flight, and on behalf of herself and the crew, thanked them for their service. This prompted a round of applause from the passengers, an appropriate gesture, and one that should not have required the flight attendant's prompting.

This past weekend in New York City was Fleet Week, the annual event in several cities around the country when one or more military ships docks for the weekend. The sailors are then allowed to disembark and enjoy a few days of fun around the town, and residents of the city are in turn encouraged to tour the ships visiting. Naturally I saw several sailors around the city throughout the weekend, again, all sharply dressed in their whites. I seemingly should have learned my lesson from the airplane last week and made a point of at the very least thanking these men and women for serving our country, but for some reason, I didn’t, and I imagine in not speaking to them, I was among the vast majority of New Yorkers, and that’s wrong.

For the record, I happen to be a supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While I certainly don’t believe the conflicts have been perfectly waged or that the administration is without fault, I remain, in this case, in the minority in terms of my belief that we are doing the right thing and should continue to do so. I recognize, though, that the majority of Americans do not want the wars to continue, and many are angry with the administration and others for the way we entered these wars, and for how the conflicts have been handled since. But regardless of one’s view of why and how these wars began, they are the reality now – they are happening, and we are in them. And because they are happening, hundreds of thousands of men and women like you and me are spending months and in some cases years halfway around the world fighting on behalf of The United States of America. These sailors, soldier and Marines are husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. Many have careers in the private sector that they have had to leave when called up for service. These brave members of the armed forces did not have anything to do with why and how we got into the wars. They are simply following orders, and putting their lives in jeopardy on a daily basis.

So again, regardless of one’s view of the wars, or on the leaders who brought us into the wars, the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are happening, and we are in them. So on this Memorial Day, I committed myself to make sure I take those extra 30 seconds to thank a young sailor or soldier for his or her service, whether I see them on an airplane, on the streets of Manhattan, or elsewhere – this week, and for as long as our presence there continues. I would respectfully ask anyone who reads this to do the same. If you’re opposed to the wars or opposed to the administration that got us in them, set aside those political differences and that anger in the presence of a member of the armed services. Remember, after all, they did not choose to fight these wars and they bare no responsibility for our being there. Without question, they deserve our appreciation and respect, and the time and effort it takes us to show them that appreciation and respect is far less time and effort than they are spending in service to our country.

(This post can also be seen at Splice Today: http://splicetoday.com/)

The Obama Strategy: Can It Work In November?

In casting himself from the beginning as a fresh-faced candidate who has not spent a great deal of time in Washington, D.C., Barack Obama clearly sought the “outsider” mantle in the 2008 election. Running as the outsider promising “change” and “hope” was a politically pitch-perfect strategy for an electorate who are largely dissatisfied with the current administration and its policies. This was also a deft tool for countering claims that Obama lacked the experience or qualifications required for the presidency. By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s inability to read the collective mood of the voters resulted in a campaign with the wrong tone and message, and is a primary reason why she lost the race for the nomination. By the time Hillary realized that “change” was the buzzword of this election year, Obama had already opened up a considerable lead in delegates that he has never relinquished.

Left largely unaddressed as Obama campaigned was the issue of his race, and that was exactly the way he and his strategists wanted it. Obama did not want to be known simply as “the black candidate”, a label previously applied to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and one that does not paint a portrait of electability. It was an effective gambit as indeed, part of Obama’s wide-ranging appeal initially was his ability to seemingly transcend the issue of race, fashioning himself as a “post-racial candidate” and attracting the support of African-American and white voters alike. This carefully crafted strategy was executed to near perfection until March, when the controversy over his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, threatened to derail it. In response to the media firestorm over Wright, Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia designed ostensibly to serve as damage control. He also shrewdly used the opportunity and attention to address the much broader and more complex issue of race relations in America. In some sense, his efforts paid off and, with the help of the majority of the media, he not only managed to (at least temporarily) put the Wright fiasco behind him, he also managed to deliver a speech that was almost universally lauded. It may have been a Pyrrhic victory of sorts, however, because in taking the issue of race head-on, he lost much of the transcendent, “post-racial” magic he had previously enjoyed.

As Obama’s strategy for his General Election battle with John McCain begins to take shape, watch for Obama and his campaign to attempt to use his inexperience and his race as veritable shields against any and all criticism. If this act of political jujitsu is successful, it very likely will lead to an Obama victory in November.

The strategy was first evident when Obama gained “front runner” status and began to attract the scrutiny and political barbs that accompany it. If Hillary Clinton attempted to contrast herself with Obama or questioned his readiness for the highest office in the land, the Obama Campaign immediately accused her of employing “old-style Washington politics”. For someone with negatives as high as hers, Hillary could not risk being viewed any more unfavorably than she already was, and so she was forced to curtail asking questions about Obama that are absolutely relevant in a presidential election. Is a first-term senator who has been running for the Oval Office since essentially day one in the senate really qualified for the presidency? This is a legitimate question. But if Hillary asked the question, she was tagged as just another cynical, mud-slinging Washington politician. The media, largely “in the tank” for Obama, allowed the questions to go unanswered and perpetuated the impression that Clinton was out of bounds in asking them.

When Obama’s association with Reverend Wright threatened to torpedo his campaign, the same strategy was employed, with race now injected into the mix. In his Philadelphia speech, Obama himself arguably played “the race card” when he seemed to imply that the anger expressed by Wright was something that white Americans should not find surprising, and something that could not be understood or appreciated by those who were not black themselves:

“That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table…And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.”

By saying this, Obama appeared to justify Wright’s anger (if not his incendiary words) while simultaneously attempting to now use his race to fend off critical questions about his association with the man. But as millions of Americans saw the clips of Wright shown on the news and all over the Internet, questions lingered. How could Obama not have known about this side of his pastor of twenty years – the man he referred to as his “spiritual adviser” and “sounding board”? Here again, this is a legitimate question, but when it and others like it were asked, the Obama Campaign quickly labeled such inquiries as below the belt, and merely “distractions” from “the real issues” affecting Americans. Michelle Obama herself employed the tactic after being asked by Meredith Viera on The Today Show whether she felt Wright had “betrayed” her husband. Mrs. Obama was almost scolding in her response:

"You know what I think, Meredith? We’ve got to move forward. You know, this conversation [about Wright] doesn’t help my kids. You know, it doesn’t help kids out there who are looking for us to make decisions and choices about how we’re going to better fund education."

America is in a perilous time. We are engaged in a war on two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the true number of unconventional fronts on which the country battles in the larger campaign to prevent domestic terror attacks is likely astronomical. The economy has unquestionably slowed, and plenty of Americans are hurting financially as a result. The problems that will face the next president are many, and they are very complex. Voters have a right to know if a person who may be the next president has the knowledge and experience necessary to handle the job. Similarly, Obama’s association with Wright raises important questions about his character and judgment. Many of the anti-white beliefs that Wright espouses and promotes are, quite frankly, the same beliefs that scare many white voters about “the black candidate”. While there is no reason to think that Obama subscribes to any of Wright’s absurd views, the nature and length of his relationship with Wright are significant enough to make the questions fair game.

If John McCain wants to defeat Barack Obama in November, he would be foolish not to contrast his decades of experience with Obama’s lack thereof. And while it is unlikely that McCain himself will raise the Reverend Wright issue, it will certainly be raised by independent “527 groups”, and perhaps even by the Republican National Committee or other groups not directly affiliated with the McCain Campaign. When pressed on either, however, watch for Team Obama to attempt to turn these potential vulnerabilities into strengths, and to cast Obama as being above the fray by branding the contrasts and questions as more of the same Washington politics, as simply distractions from the issues that matter, or even as racist in nature. Should the majority of the mainstream media continue to be complicit in this effort, it is a near certainty that Obama will never have to fully address many questions for which the American people deserve answers.

(This post can also be seen at Splice Today: http://splicetoday.com/)

Game Over. (Now Who's Going to Tell Hillary)???

After a seemingly endless primary season, I think it is safe to declare today that Senator Barack Obama will be the Democratic Nominee for President of the United States. Obama absolutely crushed Senator Hillary Clinton in yesterday's North Carolina Primary, and nearly pulled out a victory in Indiana where she had been favored to win. For Clinton to continue the campaign with any degree of credibility (if not self-respect), she had to have a far more decisive win in Indiana, and a far less decisive loss in North Carolina.

For a short period of time late last night when it appeared that Obama might win both states, some of the communications from the Clinton Campaign seemed indicative of an impending withdrawal from the race. There was word that she would hold no public events today, and even an apparently erroneous report that she had canceled her morning news show appearances for today. Apparently, though, while flying back to Washington from Indiana (during which time she was declared the winner in Indiana), Hillary and/or her advisers had changed course, announcing a campaign stop today in West Virginia, site of the next primary on Tuesday, as well as fundraiser in Washington this evening. Early this morning, news broke that Clinton had loaned her campaign nearly $6.5 million recently. Even as I write, the Clinton Campaign has announced that Hillary will also appear in South Dakota on Thursday -- a state whose primary is not for another four weeks! None of this sounds like a candidate who is ready to quit.

Remaining in the race now as it certainly appears she intends to do is not only stubborn and ill-advised, it really borders on the delusional. Quite simply, without some catastrophic implosion of the Obama Campaign, there is no way Clinton can now win the nomination. The sheer mathematical hurdles she faces alone are insurmountable, but when you add those to an obvious shift in tone from the media and political pundits and what I expect will be an imminent and significant shift of superdelegate support to Obama, it becomes even more crystal clear that for Hillary Clinton, this game is over.

My personal opinion is that Hillary and her inner circle are well aware of the reality of the situation. They have seen the numbers, and undoubtedly have crunched them in every conceivable way in search of positive spin. After last night, there is no positive spin to be found. I suspect that the reason she sounds today like a candidate who intends to continue (and indeed who is backing her rhetoric up by making additional campaign appearances) is to attempt to increase her leverage when it comes to the customary bargaining that will take place between Hillary, Obama and their respective campaigns when she inevitably throws in the towel. Whether she wants the vice presidential slot on the ticket, a cabinet position or who knows what else -- the longer she stays in the race and effectively denies Obama the ability to officially claim the nomination, the more desperate he will be for her to withdraw, and the more inclined he might be to give her what she wants to make that happen. A good test of this theory will be to watch over the next few weeks -- assuming she does continue her campaign -- to see if she avoids negative attacks on Obama. If while continuing her run she hesitates to inflict further political damage on him, that could be a sign that her continuing campaign efforts are no longer about winning, but instead about improving her strategic position for an eventual exit.

Regardless of her motive for remaining in the race, I believe it is now time for Hillary to withdraw if she values her own political future. A graceful exit -- even after a fairly bruising campaign against Obama -- would almost certainly result in enough goodwill on the part of the Democratic electorate to give her a future -- whether it be running again for president in 2012 (if Obama loses this year), running for Governor of New York, or seeking the position of Majority Leader in the Senate. On the other hand, if she continues to campaign in earnest, attacking Obama and pulling out every conceivable stop despite reality of her situation, she risks diminishing Obama's chances in November, further dividing the Democratic Party, and earning (rightfully) the permanent anger and resentment of her fellow Democratic officeholders and the Democratic voters. The choice should be clear, and the route she chooses to take will tell us more about exactly who Hillary Clinton is than anything else she has ever done or said.

Asking the "Wright" Questions

The Democratic Party may have a hell of a mess on their hands. That’s right, a mess, even in an election year in which every conceivable circumstantial advantage is on their side, and in which either candidate who ultimately prevails will make history as the first African-American or woman to ever win a major party’s nomination. Add all of this to an uninspired Republican base with an arguably weak candidate, and it’s hard to see how the Democrats could screw this up, right? Maybe not...

On the one hand, there is Barack Obama, the first African-American candidate with a serious shot at winning the presidency. He has won more states than any other Democratic candidate, won more of the popular vote, has more pledged delegates, and has more money in his campaign coffers. He is an incredibly gifted candidate, perhaps the most eloquent and rhetorically talented politician to seek the presidency in a generation. By any measure, he should already be the Democratic Nominee, yet on several occasions over the last two months, he has failed to win primaries that would have resulted in his decisively securing the nomination.

On the other hand, there is Hillary Clinton. She began the campaign as the overwhelming favorite but has had the unfortunate timing of running against the wunderkind Obama, who has not only won over millions of voters, but the mainstream media as well. Her campaign has been poorly managed, and she has been weighed down by the significant baggage of her time as First Lady and her husband’s controversial presidency. In a year in which voters seem to yearn for change, she failed to anticipate it, fashioning herself instead as the candidate of experience. Yet despite all of this, she remains in the race, and the Democrats have been unable to officially anoint their standard-bearer for 2008.

Even now, it is difficult to see how Obama will not ultimately win the nomination. Why then, can he not close the deal? The answer boils down to one man: The Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. It is hard to imagine there is anyone who has not heard about the Reverend or seen clips of some of his more infamous rants. For anyone somehow unfamiliar, Reverend Wright is the recently retired pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama has attended for twenty years. Wright married Barack and Michele Obama, baptized their two daughters, and has in the past been referred to by Obama as his “spiritual advisor” and “sounding board”.

The Reverend Wright was injected into the mainstream in mid-March, when ABC News acquired videos of dozens of Reverend Wright’s past sermons. The material found showed a man prone to incendiary, inflammatory, hate-filled and bigoted comments. In one sermon, he instructed his congregation not to sing “God Bless America”, but rather to say “God Damn America”. In another – on the first Sunday after September 11th, 2001 – he expressed his belief that 9/11 was nothing more than “America’s chickens coming home to roost”. In yet another, he opined that the AIDS Virus had been intentionally created by the American government as a form of “genocide” against African-Americans. And in still another, he referred to the United States as “the U.S. KKK of A.”, a “country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people”.

Obama attempted to put this behind him with a lofty speech in Philadelphia last month. In the speech, he gingerly addressed Wright, and while he expressed his disagreement with Wright’s aforementioned statements and beliefs, he dramatically stated:

“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother…"

He used the opportunity, though, to more broadly -- and with rhetorical beauty -- address the state of race relations in America. With the media’s help, the conventional wisdom seemed to hold that with his speech, Obama had not only diffused the Reverend Wright issue, but that he had actually managed to use it to his advantage.

But Reverend Wright didn’t get the memo, and last weekend, he reappeared with a vengeance. He not only managed to make new controversial statements, he also took the incredible step of reiterating and reaffirming many of the same comments and beliefs that had sparked the media firestorm a month prior. Further, seemingly personally wounded by Obama’s distancing of himself, the Reverend also dismissed much of Obama’s professed disappointment in him as mere" political posturing", the necessary steps taken by “a politician” to placate the electorate. To claim that Obama might simply be just another run-of-the-mill politician flew in the face of the carefully crafted image Obama has used to his great advantage this year. Much of his appeal to voters, after all, has been that he is a fresh face, someone not hardened or made cynical by years in Washington, and someone who promises “a different kind of politics”.

The double-edged sword, though, for a candidate like Obama who presents himself as a fresh face and about whom relatively little is known, is that when any facts or information emerge that may shed light on just who Obama is or just exactly what he believes, those facts or information take on more significance than they otherwise might. For example, a controversial televangelist, John Hagee, endorsed John McCain in the Texas Primary in February. Like the Reverend Wright, Hagee has a history of controversial and inflammatory statements. Some in the media such as liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich and MSNBC's resident leftist Keith Olbermann are trying to equate McCain's connection to Hagee with Obama's relationship with Reverend Wright. This is likely to be a futile effort because most importantly, there is no long-standing association between McCain and Hagee, and also because unlike Obama, McCain has been a public figure for more than twenty-five years. And while McCain's career has not been free of controversy, he is largely a known quantity, and he has certainly never given the slightest indication that he believes any of the far-flung remarks for which Hagee has rightly been criticized. While this is something of a double-standard, keep in mind that Obama will tout his lack of Washington experience (the reason that so little is known about him) as an advantage, and also will not hesitate to remind voters of McCain's long and very public record for his own political benefit, and already has with his back-handed compliments about McCain's "half century of service" to the country. If Obama wants to run as the "newcomer" with the positives that accompany such a label in this election year, he should also be willing to accept the higher level of scrutiny that ensues.

The most recent Reverend Wright barrage -- including the implicit accusation leveled by Wright that Obama might act or speak out of vulgar political expediency rather than snow-white virtue and integrity -- was apparently too much for the senator to stomach. After a full twenty-four hours without commenting on Wright's latest and greatest, on Tuesday, Obama changed his Philadelphia tune, and seemed to very clearly disown the right reverend. (His grandmother seems to remain in good standing). At a press conference in Winston-Salem, NC last Tuesday, Obama attempted to sever his ties to Wright, telling reporters:

"I am outraged by the comments that [Wright] made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday. You know, I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992. I have known Reverend Wright for almost 20 years. The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church. They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either."

Obama’s repudiation may have been too little too late, though. Polls show that many voters have serious concerns about Obama due to his association with Wright, Clinton has a solid lead in the once neck-and-neck Indiana polls, and the double-digit lead Obama previously enjoyed in North Carolina is down to less than 10 points. If she wins in Indiana Tuesday, the race for the Democratic Nomination will go on, first to West Virginia on May 13th, then to Kentucky and Oregon on May 20th, Puerto Rico on June 1st, and conclude with Montana and South Dakota on June 3rd. After June 3rd, there will be no further primaries or caucuses. Mathematically, however, neither Obama nor Clinton will have been able to win the number of pledged delegates needed to secure the nomination, leaving the party’s fate in the hands of the superdelegates – nearly 800 current and former elected officials free to support whichever candidate they choose.

Assuming the remaining primaries and caucuses play out as now predicted, it will be very hard for the superdelegates not to throw their support behind Obama – the candidate who will have captured more votes and delegates – lest they be seen as subverting the “will of the people”. What happens, though, if it becomes clear that Obama has been mortally wounded by the Reverend Wright controversy? Does the Wright issue matter, or is it merely a "distraction" as Obama now frames it?

I believe it does matter, and this is a question that I have grappled with since Wright's sermons first emerged in March. At that time, I reserved judgment, but with Wright's repetition of even the most outrageous claims seen in the videos, it becomes harder to believe that the hateful remarks we saw from the sermons were simply "cherry picked" or "taken out of context" as Obama first tried to explain, or that Wright's inflammatory invective could have been such a surprise and shock to him. I also think it is significant because this entire Wright affair speaks to the person Obama is and to the judgment he has -- both quite important in assessing a person's qualifications and readiness to be the leader of the free world.

The question of just exactly who Wright was to Obama must also be asked. How significant a role did he play in Obama's life? How influential was he in Obama's political views? In a Chicago Tribune article in January of 2007, before he had officially announced his candidacy, Obama described the importance of Wright in the following way:

"What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice. He's much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I'm not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics."

This implies a relationship and a communication between Obama and Wright that goes beyond spiritual and beyond what might be the expected relationship between a pastor and one of his congregants. Again, this is the man who married Obama and his wife, who baptized their children, and Wright was the very first person he thanked in his victory speech after he was elected to the Senate in 2004. Obama even titled his book, The Audacity of Hope, after the first sermon he ever heard Reverend Wright give.

Yet it seems that from the very beginning of the campaign there was an awareness of the political peril posed by Reverend Wright. Obama has admitted that he uninvited Wright from giving the invocation in February of 2007 when he announced that he was running for president. According to several sources, this was a fairly sudden rescinding of the invitation, and in explaining it to Wright, Obama told him (per Reverend Wright's recollection):

"You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public."

This implies at least a passing familiarity with the controversial nature of some of Wright's sermons. But when the feeding frenzy surrounding Wright took hold in March, Obama seemed to to downplay how cognizant he was about his former pastor's rhetoric, releasing the following statement:

"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation."

This implies less familiarity. And then several days later in his Philadelphia speech, Obama seemed to offer another version of what he knew about Wright's views and tendencies, saying:

"I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely."

But yet he indicated he could not disown the man. So what changed for Obama between his March 18th speech in Philadelphia and his now apparent disowning of the man he'd indicated he was incapable of disowning? After all, there was very little of Reverend Wright's most recent pronouncements that had not already been heard in the series of sermons brought to light in March.

I believe the answer to that question (and also the answer to why Obama waited twenty-four hours before severing ties last week) is that the Obama Campaign saw poll numbers that indicated Reverend Wright was doing serious damage to them, and that a more forceful, angered reaction was necessary to stop his slide in the polls. I also think -- and this is supported by Obama's uninviting Wright from his announcement fifteen months ago -- that Obama and his campaign knew well the danger that his association with Wright represented to his chances for election. I believe that with this knowledge, they took the conscious (but inexplicable) gamble of not heading off the potential controversy by having a very public and decisive break with Wright early on in the campaign. The gamble did not pay off.

So what, then, does all of this tell us about Barack Obama? First and foremost, I think it tells us that he is not as averse or opposed to the tactics and maneuvers of a "typical politician". When poll numbers showed damage, he took the politically expedient path -- just as Hillary Clinton and many other politicians he criticizes for similar actions would have done -- not exactly "a different kind of politics". I also think it tells us that Obama has not been as honest with the voters about Wright as he could have been. At one point he called Wright a political "sounding board", at another his "spiritual advisor", and then when the controversy was swirling in March, he implied far less proximity to Wright and his views. But beyond the changes in Obama's descriptions of just how close he was with Wright is the following question: does anyone really think that someone as intelligent as Obama and as long-associated with Wright and his church as he was would seriously have been unfamiliar with the pastor's outrageous comments? I for one, do not. What does that tell us about Obama's judgment and values?

Since his break with Wright last week, the media have again helped him along by applauding the "forcefulness" of his remarks and the courage it took for him to take that step. The Obama Campaign has tried vigorously to imply that any further discussion of Wright is below-the-belt politics, merely a distraction from the "real issues" that concern Americans. In other words, the Obama Campaign wants to close the door on the Reverend Wright controversy as a campaign issue for good. I suspect this is wishful thinking on their part, especially if he has an unexpectedly poor showing tomorrow. The voters of North Carolina in particular may be the best indicator of whether or not that door is ever capable of being closed.

Therein lies the mess the Democrats may face. Obama is the apparent choice of the people, but if he is thought to be unelectable in November and Clinton is given the nomination by virtue of the superdelegates, the Democratic Party will likely face an implosion. Most immediately, this implosion would manifest itself in the party losing the votes of millions of African-Americans and other Obama supporters in November – and therefore losing the election. In the long-term and more seriously, the inevitable perception that Clinton had stolen the nomination from Obama would be a crisis from which the party would not soon recover – if ever.

So as Tuesday approaches, watch carefully. Clinton will almost certainly win in Indiana, and with an enormous number of African-American voters in North Carolina, Obama should win there. If, however, Clinton somehow wins in North Carolina, Obama will be in serious trouble, the first seeds of a potential Democratic Party apocalypse will have been planted, and John McCain should start buying lottery tickets.

(An abbreviated version of this post can also be seen at Splice Today: http://splicetoday.com/).