Color on the Pastor Wright Issue (Pardon the Pun)

I read a ton of articles on Pastor Wright and Black Liberation Theology in the process of doing homework for my "Thought Experiment" blog. Much of what I read, particularly on Black Liberation Theology, didn't make me very happy.

I convinced myself that BLT wasn't anti-American so much as anti-oppressor and pro-oppressed. Give credit where credit is due. BLT is pro-Gay (tolerance is goodness). Also Trinity United Church of Christ was one of the first organizations in the US to openly condemn Apartied (while the US govt. still suppoted it) and support Nelson Mandela. Today they support the Palestinians and are anti-Israel. Again, the rationale is because one is the oppressed and the other is the oppressor. Obviously this is not in line with American policy, and by supporting the democratically elected Palestinian leadership (Hamas) TUCC is supporting what the US considers to be a terrorist organization. But at one time the US considered Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist.

However James Cone, the father of BLT, lays a foundation that is fundamentally anti-white. Some of Cone's statements will be quite shocking to white folks ... a great deal of whom apparently aren't watching FOX news these days. There's a %100 chance we will all become intimate with Mr. Cone's ideas in the fall through 527 ads. But before anyone get's too upset, I recommend the linked article below. In the context of a statement by Frederick Douglass, Pastor Wright and his church might make a little more sense.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/07/080407fa_fact_sanneh?currentPage=1

Dewey Defeats Truman!

OK, apparently reports of Obama's demise were premature. All of a sudden NC looks like it will be a rout.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_032508.pdf (Obama by 21 pts)
http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/downloads/uploaded/31_InsiderAdvantage_%20Majority_Opinon_NC_Dem_Poll_(3-27-2008).pdf (Obama by 15 pts)

Splits along racial/gender/age/income lines look pretty much like they did coming out of Texas and Ohio. Basically ... polls are indicating a full recovery from the Pastor Wright flap.

Also there is today's daily Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105814/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Back-Into-Lead-Democratic-Race.aspx?loc=interstitialskip (Obama by 8 pts nationally)

I should caveat this by saying that we still can't rule out the "Bradley Effect"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect

But I would expect that we'll see a boatload of superdelegate commitments to Obama based on these polls alone. Perhaps that will be followed by Clinton bowing out. This thing may be over folks.

Thought Experiment: A speech Obama might give on Pastor Wright

My fellow Americans, I stand before you today to describe how spirituality informs my life, and may someday inform my presidency. Let me start by saying that I’m a proud Christian, I’m proud to be a member of TUCC, and I’m proud to have had Jeremiah Wright as my pastor. My faith and my church are integral to my hopeful outlook, my belief in my fellow man, and my desire to serve my country as a proud American.

Ironically, my church and my relationship with its Pastor, Jermiah Wright, have caused many to question these characteristics which I consider the hallmarks of my candidacy. Therefore, I feel it is important to talk about what is in my heart so that the missing parts of this story can be better understood. I believe that when the full measure of my spirituality is taken, Americans will be confident in the core values and ideas that I take away from my church – even if they aren’t completely comfortable with the way those values and ideas are delivered.

Many of you had never heard of TUCC prior to my candidacy. Your first exposure to my Pastor was a series of outrageous sound bites played over and over on network and cable news. Most of you now struggle to understand why I would be a member of this congregation for 20 years. You struggle to understand why I would want my children raised in this church.

Let me say that first and foremost, I am a member of TUCC to enter into a covenant with the Lord through his son Jesus Christ, to celebrate and reaffirm that relationship through communal worship and conversation, and to use Christian values to guide my choices. These are the core motivations held by Christians all around the world.

But TUCC offered me an approach to Christianity that was uniquely empowering. TUCC presented scripture and spirituality in a way that a person with African heritage such as me could more closely identify. TUCC’s Africentric approach allowed me to fully realize a relationship with God that heretofore did not exist.

But TUCC’s Africentic approach … the very thing that attracted me … is a nuance that can be misunderstood. Critics charge that Africentrism is tantamount to black separatism. But this charge is not true. Black separatism violates the fundamental Christian value that we are all equal in God’s eyes. Africentrism is akin to Europeans painting Jesus to look like them in spite of the fact that most scholars believe that he was a Semite.

But Pastor Wright was also a major factor in my decision to join TUCC. I respected his service to his country in the Marines, his scholarly work, his service to God and to his community, and his ability to grow TUCC from an 87 member congregation to over 8000 today. His sermons had a deep emotional impact which translates into a powerful spiritual fervor. And though he occasionally went over the top, the positive far outweighed the negative.

Furthermore when Pastor Wright is put in context, it becomes easy to interpret his sermons differently. Pastor Wright was a product of the 1960’s civil rights movement. He watched the leaders of the day overcome injustice by directly challenging the people of America. And so, when he sees what he believes to be injustice today he is not hesitant to do the same. He sees this as his patriotic duty. When he unfortunately analyzes public events in the context of race, I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality. The power of his ideas is not lost in the translation.

This is not to say that Pastor Wright never offends me or that I am apologizing for his transgressions. The idea that we somehow deserved 9/11 was an egregious error, as was the honoring of Louis Farrakhan. Furthermore, I view his race-centric views as wrong-headed. However, I understand that some of this is a product of his experiences.

I understand that even after I have explained all this, that some will still think badly of Pastor Wright. Hopefully most will understand that I think highly of him even though I know he has to be taken with a grain of salt. And hopefully most will understand that Pastor Wright and TUCC are my pathway to a deeply rewarding relationship with god. This is why I stand by them.

Obama Damage Control Watch

Finally a poll that shows good news for Obama.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/105559/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-Now-47-Obamas-45.aspx

"Clinton moved 7 percentage points ahead of Obama in Gallup's March 19 report and sustained a significant 5-point lead on March 20. Her gains were coincident with the controversy over Obama's former pastor and "spiritual mentor," Rev. Jeremiah Wright. However, the surge in Democrats' preference for Clinton that Gallup detected earlier in the week has started to move out of the three-day rolling average, and the race is back to a near tie. It is possible that Obama's aggressive efforts to diffuse the Wright story, including a major speech about race on March 18, have been effective.

Still, Obama has yet to recover fully from the apparent damage done by the Wright controversy. It was only one week ago that Obama led the race by a significant six-point margin over Clinton, 50% to 44%. (To view the complete trend since Jan. 2, 2008, click here.)"

As we all know, you can't really trust polls. The acid test will be NC. If Hillary beats Obama there, then the Obama coalition has been damaged.

Obama Disqualification and the Return of the Dream Ticket

Early returns on Obama’s damage control of the Pastor Wright/TUCC issue are not good:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/105205/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-Moves-Into-Lead-Over-Obama.aspx

Plus these polls taken prior to Obama’s “More Perfect Union” Speech indicate that the damage done was extensive.

http://edisk.fandm.edu/FLI/keystone/pdf/keymar08_1.pdf
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=45313abe-4220-409a-bc6c-5159d0751f46
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_031908.pdf

Obama is apparently losing the middle and lower class swing voters that he’s worked so hard to cultivate. If Obama can’t recover in this demographic, he will not only lose the general election … he will lose by a landslide.

Superdelegates and Obama supporters are holding their breath waiting for more post-“Perfect Union” polling data. Without a significant recovery, Obama will lose a string of primaries going into the general election. In North Carolina, where Obama was up 5-10%, there is now a virtual tie and trending for Hillary Clinton. The Clinton lead in PA has nearly doubled.

The nightmare scenario for the Democrats is that a mortally wounded Obama limps into the convention with a big lead in elected delegates. Superdelegates will be faced with a decision: Do we stick with Obama and risk a huge loss that not only loses the presidency, but potentially hurts lower level candidates as well? Or do we shift to Hillary Clinton and risk losing big because the Obama supporters stay home?

If the nightmare scenario comes to pass, there will be only one course of action that can save the Democrats … Obama has to drop out of the race and throw his support to Clinton. Most likely, Obama will have to be the VP candidate. I’ve previously written that Obama wouldn’t take this position, but this situation would pretty much require that Obama be a team player so that the Democrats could have a chance in November.

Why is the Pastor Wright Issue Such a Big Deal?

I’ve talked to many Obama supporters that seem bewildered that this is such a big deal. After all, how is this different than any of a number of other issues that were all over the news and then flamed out after a few days?

The difference is that the issue of spirituality is always incredibly sensitive in presidential politics. In 1960, candidate John F. Kennedy had to give a speech to assure the country that he wouldn’t be taking orders from the Pope because he was Catholic. In the 2008 primaries, Mitt Romney had to give a speech to reassure Republicans that his church of Latter Day Saints was not a cult religion and in fact that they worshipped Jesus Christ.

It is my belief that if Obama was just buddies with Pastor Wright and not a member of his congregation, he would easily survive this controversy. The thing that’s killing Obama is that swing voters are looking at his church and they are saying … “Sorry, that won’t work for us”.

So What Does All this Mean? What’s Going to Happen?

It’s hard to say what will happen as we are in uncharted waters. I can tell you that if Obama was a white candidate, he would be disqualified with no chance to come back. Obama is banking on white America giving him a pass on what they consider to be a “bad” church (at least in presidential terms) based on the sordid history of racial injustice in this country. The bottom line is that I’d rather be in Clinton’s position than Obama’s right now.

If the polls continue to go in a bad direction and if he loses this last series of primaries, Obama will be forced to drop out of the race. He can recover from this so long as he cuts ties with TUCC. He is too young to risk doing serious damage to his party and effectively ending his political career. Make no mistake about it, Obama understands how this might play out. And he still would have a very real chance of becoming president one day if he plays ball.

Of course another possibility is that the “Perfect Union” speech convinced voters that Obama is still the guy they like in spite of the fact that they don’t like his church. In that case, Obama is in great position to be the next president. Without a FL and MI re-vote, Obama has Clinton check-mated. With John McCain’s string of gaffes this week, he’s not looking like the guy that can pull off a miracle GOP win in the fall.

Conclusion

My take-away from all this is that in 2008 America is ready for an African-American President AND it’s ready for a Woman President. However, America may not be ready for a non-mainstream Christian candidate.

Critique of Obama’s “More Perfect Union”

Barack Obama delivered a speech in Philadelphia yesterday. The speech was intended to address a significant negative reaction to statements made by Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright.

(http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/people2/just_8_have_favorable_opinion_of_pastor_jeremiah_wright)

In my estimation, this speech was lacking thematic clarity. I would liken it to a horoscope … a jumble of ideas loosely tied together from which the listener can latch onto whatever resonates with his or her own experience. As such, it may be effective for some of its audience (the ones who are inclined to believe in horoscopes give Obama the benefit of the doubt). However, for those that needed to understand Obama’s rationale for closely associating himself and his family with Pastor Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ, the speech came up short.

Let me say for the record that Obama and his team have proven themselves to be communicators of the first order. Thus there is a different standard for his speeches. Usually after an Obama speech, I can immediately jot down the main theme, the target audience, the intended take-away, etc. However this time, the only thing that was clear was the target audience – clearly this was the swing voting blue collar white males.

I will do my best to critique this speech. But I will qualify my commentary by saying that 10 different people could easily have10 different interpretations.

Theme of the Speech

In speechwriting 101, you are taught to immediately establish the theme … support … support … support … then conclude with a re-statement of theme. Obama doesn’t follow the template and thus, the theme is not clear.

In “A More Perfect Union”, Obama starts with 4 paragraphs of background on the Constitution, the founding fathers handling of the slavery issue, and the subsequent struggle to achieve the ideal of equality.

Finally, Obama makes the following statement which I believe is the theme of the speech:

“…unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren. “

Or restated: Through better understanding and alignment of goals between races we can take another incremental step on the way to our Constitutional ideal of equality.

Now restated as I believe this is meant to be interpreted by the target audience: Listen working class whites, YOU are not being treated equally AND African-Americans are not being treated equally as the Constitution says we should be. If these two groups can align their goals, they can form a powerful successful coalition.

So from this, I think we're going to get something similar to Obama's Pennsylvania stump speech.

Supporting Point 1: When racial issues are not in the way, this coalition has been successful

“Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. “

(Nevermind that the white Americans have been more upscale than working class)

Supporting Point 2: African Americans need improved infrastructure to enable the American Dream (or alternatively the establishment has always done us wrong)

“ … Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

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. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. “

Supporting Point 3: Working class whites need the same infrastructure to maintain the opportunity of achieving the American Dream (or alternatively, now the establishment is doing you wrong)

“…Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. “

Supporting Point 4: This coalition which would otherwise be natural is kept apart by the political exploitation of racial resentment

“… Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. “

Supporting Point 5: A great example of racial resentment exploited for political purposes … Jeremiah Wright

“…On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

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 – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way “

So in other words, Obama doesn’t deny that resentment and anger exist in his church. Furthermore his friend and former pastor presents a “profoundly distorted” view of this country … which Obama condemns.

The big problem here is not that Obama and Wright are buddies, but that Wright is being taken out of context for the purposes of political exploitation

The $64K question: Why is the Obama-Wright relationship not a problem?

“…The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

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 – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. “

Restated: Jeremiah Wright has done enough good in Obama’s life that he can overlook (and condemn) the “profoundly distorted” view of this country. Obama knows that there are underlying reasons why Wright is what he is. Furthermore Wright reflects (albeit in an extreme) the feelings of his community. Obama doesn’t want to disown his church and his community over his disagreements on the country and on racial resentment. He just wants to divorce himself from those ideas and still have those relationships. Obama then goes on to compare his relationship with Wright with his relationship to his grandmother who also made him “cringe” from time to time.

Now, if I put myself in the shoes of a working class white, I see Obama’s dilemma. I too have grandparents, uncles, etc that make me cringe. Yet I still love them. So the idea of the Obama-Wright friendship might not bother me anymore.

However, when I start imagining myself in a community and a church that is overtly bigoted and anti-American … this is a little tougher to swallow. However if my race was at one time enslaved and then suffered a century of injustice after that, OK … I might take Obama’s word for it.

But the final jump that I am asked to make is that Obama can completely divorce himself from these ideas held by his church and his community. Furthermore, that even though he disagrees with these ideas, he’s willing to steep his children in this church and community … no doubt perpetuating these bad ideas. The bottom line is that I think most people would find a church and community where those ideas that they consider bad are less intense for the benefit of their children.

I don’t think most people make that last jump. And I think some people won’t give Obama the benefit of the doubt on the anti-American and bigotry in their church leap. They’ll imagine themselves in a church where African Americans or America was being derided and they’ll stop thinking about the circumstances that might underlie that behavior. So at best Obama’s white working class audience will be uncomfortable with his explanation. At worst, they will reject his explanation out of hand.

Conclusion

I found this speech to be unusually poorly organized. There was a weak statement of theme, ideas didn’t flow correctly, and the ending restatement of theme was non-existent. Comparisons to “I have a dream” are completely beyond the pale as anyone who listened to Dr. King's speech could tell you the theme and the bullet points.

In my mind, the poor organization of the speech is suspect. Obama and his team are too good to put out a product like this at this moment. Did Obama mean to confuse us? Was he looking for a horoscope type reaction? Or worse … was he looking for an emperor has no clothes reaction? I can easily envision that Obama saw that his argument to his target audience was weak (at least with respect to Pastor Wright) and thus he had to give a speech that was a lot harder to figure out. He mixed his normal stump argument with a lot of distracting intellectually honest stuff about race and then threw in the Jermiah Wright argument. In the end we are all scratching our heads, wondering which way is up, and we’ve forgotten what this was all about in the first place.

The net effect of all this is that we're not talking about Jeremiah Wright anymore which is good for Obama. However, I have a feeling this isn't the last time we'll be examining this topic.

Great Minds Think Like Mine

Mark Schmidtt at Tapped concurs with my endgame strategy.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=03&year=2008&base_name=what_should_obama_do_about_mic

Here's some further thoughts from The New Republic's Josh Patashnik

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/03/12/should-obama-agree-to-seat-florida.aspx

Democratic Endgame

Barack Obama will be the Democratic Nominee. However he’s got a big problem. The TV networks, the Republican Party, and his opponent are all working as hard as they can to extend the Democratic primaries as long as possible. The TV networks are raking in dollars from all the campaign advertising and the high ratings. The Republican Party wants to see the Democrats spend all their money fighting each other. And Hillary Clinton is indicating that she’ll keep fighting in spite of the fact that her only winning scenario is extremely ugly and likely Pyrrhic.

The Obama campaign was well-positioned to go into end-game mode today … even with the Hillary Clinton victories. Going back to the spreadsheet leaked by the Obama campaign:

http://ia341038.us.archive.org/1/items/Obamaexcel/obamacampaignexcel.xls

They had expected to be ahead by 58 delegates today and they are 75 delegates ahead of that pace due to the overwhelming victories in the MD, VA, and WI primaries. Looking at the spreadsheet, if Clinton were to run the table with 15 point victories in every contest she would pick up roughly 100 delegates between now and the end of the race. So Obama’s 133 pledged delegate lead is looking pretty unbeatable right now.

Based on that outlook, the superdelegates are about to put their thumb on the scale. Obama is rumored to have about 50 new superdelegate commitments that he is going to roll out. This would erase the Clinton superdelegate lead and then some. Essentially, the race would be out of reach and more superdelegates would pile onto the Obama campaign, the outcome would be inevitable and Clinton would be forced to bow out.

This superdelegate thumb on the scale scenario or something close to it may still happen, but Gov Crist in FL threw a fly into the ointment. Gov Crist announced that he would support a re-do of the FL primary. This in spite of the fact that he that forced the early primary in the first place and thus was the reason that the FL delegates were disqualified. Until now, he had stood in the way of the re-do due to the $10M price tag (and assumably he wanted to damage the Democratic party’s chances to win FL in the general election). However since he’s now willing to accept the cost of the re-do (due to the damage an extended battle would cause to the Democratic candidate) FL’s 185 delegates and assumably MI’s 128 delegates are back in play. In the Hillary-run’s-the-table-by 15% scenario, she now passes Obama. Granted, this is still very hard but not impossible.

FL and MI create the same problem for Obama that TX and OH did … everyone knows how they will probably come out, but until they complete you can’t say that the Obama win is inevitable. So what’s Obama to do? An extended race with FL and MI in June would force him to spend money and time that he would otherwise use to fight John McCain.

If I were Barack Obama I’d strike the following deal: First, accept the original FL results. (he lost by 17% which resulted in 38 delegates net loss) on condition that a MI re-do would be a caucus held prior to PA.

Here’s the rationale:

1. He’s got enough delegates to to cover the loss in FL and still have the insurmountable lead.
2. He’s likely to lose a FL primary by 10-15% no matter what. FL is old and old is Hillary’s demo.
3. He owns caucuses so he’s likely to recover some of his losses in MI.
4. Hillary is likely to accept the deal because it’s good for her and she’d get a lot of pressure from her party to do so.
5. In the perception game, the FL loss will have an asterisk. Plus he’s taking a bullet for team D and thus is a hero. If the primary were to be re-run and he lost, then he’d risk losing momentum.

The bottom line is that if Obama cut such a deal, after the MI caucus he’d be basically where he expected to be today. The FL and MI problem would be neatly taken care of, and the superdelegates can avalanche to his side prior to PA more or less ending things.

UPDATE:
Crist is backing off of his statement that he'd support a re-do.

http://www.local10.com/news/15504360/detail.html

So Obama eating these delegates may not be necessary. One way or another the Dems have to figure out a way to end this after PA. In the end, Hillary supporters and FL and MI Dems have to feel like they got a fair deal.