Great work everyone. Now let’s finish the job.

But also, I will freely admit that fatigue took its toll as well, particularly as this race has dragged on and on, and on. I don’t believe I am any fair weather supporter, or thinker - but the enthusiasm this campaign has generated in me, in most of us, is hard to cultivate over this longest haul. The media, and most especially - Hillary Clinton’s campaign tactics - have worn me down. And while I still read as much as I can, I find myself skimming more instead, flinching with every reload of the five or six main blogs I frequent.

But this is the state of things in our country, our media, our politics - and I realize that to pay less attention is to allow the forces I wish to push back against more latitude than they deserve. So I think I will try to re-engage, beginning next week, at least a few hours a day. Additionally, I have been digesting the major news of the past month or so, regarding the Wright/bitter controversies, as well as some undeniable tactical errors by the Obama campaign - I hope to have substantially formed input on these subjects soon.

In the meantime, I feel 100% confidence that the campaign is still won, and my seething distrust of the Clintons has long since peaked. What now concerns me, and concerns me greatly - is what the ultimate cost of this war of attrition, in my mind useless, will end up being, and what the party has the mettle to do about it.

Until next week, remember to feel humble when you are most frustrated:

Clinton believes Obama’s support is largely a mirage–a bunch of true believers whose passion might help him cinch the nomination, but that may prove an insufficient bedrock for winning a general election when the spell might be broken by tough questions about national-security credentials, economic-policy plans and rich experience. She can’t stop from shaking her head in disbelief when longtime friends who are elected officials inform her that they are going to endorse Obama and were chiefly convinced by their children’s enthusiasm for his candidacy.

NYT:

Mr. Casey decided to back Mr. Obama, the person close to him said, because of his “ability to bring disparate groups together and transcend some of these racial and other kinds of divides.”

“Also, his kids were on his case, his four daughters,” the person said about Mr. Casey. “Not that they dictate to him, but he was paying attention. He was wondering, Why are these kids, who aren’t very political, so interested? He does have the ability to light up a younger generation.”

Especially with some thoughts on what I thought was an extraordinary week last week…

In the meantime, as far as I can tell, this is exactly why you have kids:

LINK

So I have decided that since my gut reaction is pure uneasiness over comment threads, I am just going to disable them entirely on my own little piece of the web. I want the "peace and quiet" of commentless blogs to be what andyeswecan.com aspires to.

However, I still would love to hear what anybody thinks - about anything at all.
So please email me at andyeswecan@gmailINSERTDOTCOM and let me know that you’re reading, or that you think Obama is a Hindu, or that I mispelled misspelled.

I’ll leave the comments on this post open, one last time….

According to witnesses, a loud black man approached a crowd of some 4,000 strangers in downtown Chicago Tuesday and made repeated demands for change.

Black Guy Asks Nation For Change

First, Obama took the high road, which is also the long and demanding road. He refused to "move on" with a cursory acknowledgment that "mistakes were made." He did not acknowledge. He preached and he reasoned. The law professor was in the pulpit. He refused to settle for sprinkling what have become the automatic contemporary word-drops of "distancing." It will still be possible to parse his words for insufficiencies of denunciation, but Obama’s gamble was that he could turn Wright’s damnable sins into a pivot for a sermon about how the past can be overcome, about how American it would be to accomplish that hard and necessary objective. "We may have different stories but we hold common hopes"–that was the theme. I don’t know if this is true, but we will find out whether it is what America needs to believe.

And finally, the temperature of this speech is one of its messages; or should I say invitations? Obama kept his cool and turned up the heat at the same time. For those who have not yet voted, and crucially to the superdelegates, he raised the stakes, asking them all: Can you, too, keep your cool and your heat at the same time? The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, he said, had spoken in an "incendiary" manner, but Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don’t think I’m especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up.

Richard Wolffe:

With that, Obama broke with the pattern, played out by both major contenders for the Democratic nomination, of distancing themselves from controversial supporters, applauding their resignations and plunging back into the talking points. Obama used the constant harping on Wright’s strident remarks as an opening to delve into the thorny complications of race in America.

Afterward Obama’s aides applauded the speech as a way to take control of the narrative on race—and weave into it the story of his own life. "He has wanted to make this speech for a long time," says David Axelrod, Obama’s senior strategist. "The question was when. He knew this was the right time. The firestorm about Wright and [former representative Geraldine] Ferraro meant that race was creeping up as a kind of dominant discussion." (Ferraro, a Clinton finance committee member, resigned her post after her own comments about Obama—suggesting he would not be enjoying such success as a candidate if he were white—caused a firestorm.)

Obama dictated a first draft to his young speechwriter Jon Favreau on Saturday, then reworked the speech until 3 a.m. Monday. He went at it anew on Tuesday, tweaking away until 2 a.m. Did Obama’s political aides try to warn him off the idea? "It wasn’t even a discussion," says Axelrod. "He was going to do it. I know this sounds perhaps corny, but he actually believes in the fairness and good sense of the American people, and the importance of this issue. His candidacy is predicated on the fact that we can talk to each other in an honest and forthright way on this and other issues."

John McWhorter:

He pegged Wright’s recreational alienation as wrong, as stereotyping, as a "profound mistake," as founded upon a canard that America has made no progress on race.

It must be understood what a maverick statement this is from a 40-something black politician. In the black community one does not sass one’s elders. One is expected to show a particular deference, understandably, to the generation who fought on the barricades of the Civil Rights movement. That is, to people of Jeremiah Wright’s vintage.

For a light-skinned half-white Ivy League-educated black man to repudiate, in clear language and repeatedly, the take on race of people like Julian Bond and Nikki Giovanni is not only honest but truly bold.

Alas, I cannot give a more considered response right now as I have to get on the road. But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

I love this country. I don’t remember loving it or hoping more from it than today.

Yglesias:

The kind of white resentment Obama is talking about here has been a problem for the Democratic Party for decades now notwithstanding the fact that you rarely see the party nominating African-Americans to run in majority white constituencies. What Obama is showing us here is that precisely because he’s black, he’s able to acknowledge and validate these resentments in a way that would be very difficult for a white liberal politician.

At any rate, I’d say things are back on track. The Wright business had opened up a vague sliver of hope for Hillary Clinton’s campaign — if they could produce a result in Pennsylvania that looked like a Wright-induced collapse in Obama’s white support, maybe they could convince superdelegates that he’s unelectable. After this speech, I don’t see it happening.

Ambers:

In no uncertain terms did Obama renounce — morally condemn — the hateful, anti-Semitic, anti-American and just plain bizarre rants of his pastor — "former pastor," as Obama now calls him. But he did not reject him. He refused to reject him. He is daring, in essence, his white liberal supporters to accept what Wright’s anger represents — a legacy of oppression — and daring the rest of white supporters to take a leap of faith him… and asking them to expand their minds a bit and see that Wright is preaching in a tradition that has a context that is directly related to the material and spiritual conditions of all Americans.

The sell will be easier for white liberals, I think. The speech was magnificently written. It was internally consistent with Obama apparently believes.

and:

I do think that Obama’s speech was a marvel of contemporary political rhetoric. Politically, analytically and emotively, it hit many high notes. His acknowledgment of white working class resentments (busing) and about the perception that there’s been no racial progress, his willingness to stick by his friends, his grasp of history, his sense that our views of race are cramped and caricatured… all of that is something that even those who disagree with the substance of his speech, can, I think, appreciate.

Smith:

It’s quite a speech: autobiographical, embracing complexity, and answering questions about Wright — whose most offensive words, he says, are beyond anything he’d heard in church — without ultimately disavowing him.

Throughout, he insists on things that you don’t get much of in politics: context and nuance.

Erza Klein:

Indeed, Obama could have given another speech. Shorter, to start. More focused on hope than on pain. More talk of tomorrow and less emphasis on the past. More dismissive of Wright and less insistent on the legitimacy of Wright’s experience, and the ubiquity of his thinking. He didn’t have to dwell on the black community’s frustration and the white community’s bigotry.

But this speech was something I didn’t expect: Honest. It was honest about Obama’s affection for Wright, even as it repudiated Wright’s comments. It was honest about the tragic history of race in America, even as it expressed faith in a redemptive future. It was honest about the resentment peddlers and racial charlatans who try and recast the increasing rarity of the American Dream as the consequence of ethnic competition rather than gross power imbalances. It was honest in its recognition that racial memory influences contemporary thought, honest in admitting that there’s anger in this country, and it’s justified, and that there’s fear in this country, and it’s real.

We’ll see. But that alone is a shock. Obama could have simply preached unity and forgiveness without recognizing the realities of anger and resentment. He could have done as Mitt Romney did, and sought to protect his political vulnerabilities by picking new enemies. Obama could have made this a speech about Fox News, and divisive commentators, and right wing talkshow hosts, and sleaze artists who need to be stopped. But he didn’t. He’s betting he can universalize this experience, too, and that he’ll find more votes in unity than in division. It is, at best, a gamble. But at least it’s an honest one.

Charles Murray, that guy who wrote the Bell Curve, and one of the few conservative chatterers who seemed to get it:

Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I’m concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we’re used to from our pols….

Oliver Willis:

One of my personal maxims has been that politicians will disappoint you. The ones you like will have personal failings, while the ones you detest will fail time and time again. With Senator Obama, for the first time in my life, I have watched a political leader who I don’t worry if he’ll be up to the task.

Noam Scheiber:

1.) I thought the nod at the conservative intellectual’s critique of welfare policy was very shrewd. As in: "A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families–a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened." Obama was essentially saying to conservative elites, "You can’t exactly be surprised when black pathologies seep out into the open. You’re the same people who said public policy had been nurturing those pathologies." I’m not sure conservatives will be won over by this, but it could make them stop and say, "Okay, good point."

2.) Even if you disagree with the logic of the speech, I think the basic emotional case was sound. It’s a case Obama often makes when he talks about race and his candidacy in general, but which he made pretty explicitly here:

Alan Wolfe, BC Professor:

The campaign for the Democratic nomination has already gripped the nation for two reasons: It offers either the first woman or the first African-American as the candidate of a major party, and it has been as close as the last Super Bowl. Now we have a third reason for our fascination: We have been asked to reflect in the most serious of ways about the role that race plays in the life of our country. I cannot recall any leader or potential leader in the last two or three decades asking us to do that. I hope we are up to the challenge. I do not believe–nor, from his speech, do I think that Obama believes–that to think seriously about race we have to vote for him.  But I do think that when we address race, we ought to do it, not by running endless videos of people, black or white, who have said outrageous things but by finally having the honest conversation about race we keep promising ourselves–and keep postponing. Agree or disagree with Obama, I ask people who are less inspired by him that I am, but at least acknowledge that in this presidential candidate, we have a man of honor–and an honest man.

David Corn:

a speech unlike any delivered by a major political figure in modern American history.

Charles Kaiser:

No other presidential candidate in the past 40 years has managed to speak so much truth so eloquently at such a crucial juncture in his campaign as Barack Obama did today. And he did it by speaking about race, the most persistent source of hatred among us since America began.

James Fallows:

as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney’s speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy’s famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.

Ross Douthat:

I do think the problem Jeremiah Wright creates for Obama’s campaign remains unresolved, to some extent, since there was nothing Obama could say in a single speech that would undo the perception created by his long affiliation with Wright and his church - the perception that he’s only confronting what’s wrong with Wright’s style of black politics because the media narrative is forcing him too, and that when the spotlight isn’t on him, he’s more interested in fitting in and feeling comfortable than in, well, speaking truth to power. But by using the Wright controversy as an opportunity to play up their candidate’s strengths - as an orator, but more importantly as the rare politician who can deliver a thoughtful, nuanced speech and make you feel like he means it - the Obama campaign made some sweet-tasting lemonade out of some awfully sour lemons.

John Nichols:

But Obama did not do the politically "smart" thing. He did the right thing. And that is why his campaign will weather this storm.

At the most basic level, Obama did what the media has failed to do. He presented Wright and Wright’s comments on U.S. domestic and foreign policies in context: the context of the African-American religious experience, the context of the candidate’s connection to the church and, above all, the context of this country’s unresolved experience of what Obama correctly refers to as "the original sin" of the American experiment — human bondage — and its legacy.

The speech was masterful in this regard. Obama took the time to explore questions that rarely if ever get a fair hearing in American politics.

I have a multitude of thoughts on this, but they are still formulating at this hour. I will say, that it is the most coherent and frank explanation of the status quo of race in this country that I have probably ever heard. His honesty and demeanor were powerful and sobering - and although it is already happening among the usual suspects in the whacky right-o-sphere,  I challenge any thinking person in America to deny it’s importance. It is the stark portrait of America that almost everyone is afraid to say, and Obama took advantage of this exact moment to deliver it - almost saying: fine, if you want to talk about Wright - then we will, but don’t you dare - intellectually, spiritually, or historically - ignore why someone like Wright, or the black community at large, or America itself - is the way that it is. And he refused to insert the easy distance between himself and it, instead he practically gave it a bear hug. Just the kind of courage and vision I have come to expect from him. He pitched to win, and I think he did. And I don’t care if the press agrees.

This is an important moment. Attention must be paid.

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