So the semi-official stance of the Clinton campaign has been to avoid piling on in the Wright thing. According to Ambinder,
[C]ampaign manager Maggie Williams issued an edict to staff members and surrogates and top fundraisers, urging them to hold their tongues. That the Clinton campaign was able to keep to this discipline may turn out to be the most consequential tactial move they've made in months. If anyone associated with the campaign had waded into the Wright affair, it would have been politicized in a way that probably would have hurt Clinton and not Obama.
But I smell change in the air....
Follow me.
As you probably know, Lanny Davis is to the Clintons as hair is to my buttocks: lavishly and irretrievably attached, in ways that are unsightly and somewhat icky. And he might be to reasonable thought as a cheese grater is to a scrotum, but he is a loyal soldier who knows how to stay on message.
So when he starts concern-trolling on HuffPo on the Wright affair, it sets people like me to wondering. Is it possible that the Clinton camp is worried that The Speech quelled the Wright thing too much? Or is Lanny really just concerned, a la his fretting about the netroots types hating Joe Lieberman because they're anti-Semetic?
Like a good concern troll, Lanny acknowledges that Obama gave a good speech, is a fine young man, denounced without disowning, blah blah blah:
It was a great, even brilliant, speech. I appreciate Senator Obama's willingness to tackle a difficult subject and to explain his complex reactions to some of Rev. Wright's sermons.... I am convinced that there isn't a shred in Senator Obama's being that shares these hateful or bigoted feelings. And I respect his strong words denouncing the views of a man for whom he has deep and genuine feelings of affection and loyalty, which I also respect.
But, of course, he is concerned; there is this unease, and only more from Obama can set his troubled soul to rest:
But many people, including Obama supporters, may still have two questions that Senator Obama's speech did not sufficiently answer...:
- If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the "N" word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?
- Would you support that candidate if, after knowing of or hearing those sermons, he or she still appointed that minister to serve on his or her "Religious Advisory Committee" of his or her presidential campaign?
He is concerned enough to hope that these questions "get to someone in the Obama campaign -- or a reporter traveliing with the Senator." Because Senator Obama will surely have to do so at some point ... "perhaps in the fall."
Or maybe the question won't get asked because of crap like faulty analogies and flawed premises.
It's cool that the Clinton surrogates have such a prescient understanding of what would happen if black dudes became white dudes or Puerto Rican women or whatever.