Poll Shows Wright Controversy Could Affect November Voting

The New York Times reports on a new survey showing that the Jeremiah Wright controversy has not affected opinions on Barack Obama overall, although many respondents say the issue could affect their November vote decisions:

A majority of American voters say the furor over the relationship between Senator Barack Obama and his former pastor has not affected their opinion of Mr. Obama, but a substantial number say it could influence voters this fall should he be the Democratic presidential nominee, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll....

The survey, conducted after Mr. Obama held a news conference on Tuesday forcefully renouncing Mr. Wright for making incendiary comments, found most Americans said they approved of the way Mr. Obama had responded to the episode and considered his criticism of Mr. Wright appropriate.

But nearly half of the voters surveyed, and a substantial portion of the Democrats, said Mr. Obama had acted mainly because he thought it would help him politically, rather than because he had serious disagreements with his former pastor. The broader effect of the controversy on Mr. Obama’s candidacy among Democratic primary voters was less clear-cut in the poll, but enough of them expressed some qualms about Mr. Obama’s relationship with the former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., to suggest it could sway a relatively small but potentially important group of voters in the remaining primaries.

The survey was taken in the days leading up to the primaries on Tuesday in North Carolina and Indiana.

The relatively small number of Democrats surveyed limits the conclusions that can be drawn about its findings regarding sentiment within the party. Moreover, as a national poll, it does not necessarily reflect the sentiments of voters in either Indiana or North Carolina.

The issue of Mr. Wright continues to shadow Mr. Obama — he spent the first 18 minutes of his appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” answering questions about it — and thus could be continuing to mold the public’s views of him. And questions involving racially charged episodes have historically proved difficult to poll, particularly when it comes to asking white voters about black candidates.

Still, the survey suggested that Mr. Obama had lost much or all of the once-commanding lead he had over Mrs. Clinton among Democratic voters on the question of which of them would be the strongest candidate against Mr. McCain, the likely Republican nominee.

That's putting it mildly, I would argue.

Obama's going to be "Hortonized" in the fall, by outside 527s, and fairly too. The Wright relationship's raised deep questions of character and judgment surrounding Obama, particulary on issues of courage, integrity, and veracity under fire.

Why, though, are voters giving Obama a pass? Victor David Hanson nails the answer:

I think we have sort of reached an impasse on Rev. Wright. Most Americans, I think, accept the following realties. Obama, by what he wrote in his memoirs, by what he said when he spoke in his early campaign speeches, by his frequent praise of Wright, and by his 20-year presence in front of, and subsidies to, Wright knew exactly the racist and anti-American nature of his odious pastor.

But many also seem to accept that they have invested too much in Obama and have come too far to accept anything that might end his candidacy. (Hence their hysteria over the Wright “smear”.)

In other words, privately they acknowledge:

—that their candidate made a devil’s bargain with a racist to create an authentic black persona in order to jump start a political career in Chicago;

—that their candidate was so inured to de rigueur anti-American speech from his church days, black-liberationist friends, assorted reverends, and former radicals like Ayers, that he never really thought things that Wright said were all that big a deal — hence his deer-in-the-headlights approach to the initial scandal and serial hedging. After all, in Obama’s adopted world, his church really isn’t “particularly controversial;”

—that their Obama messiah is hardly a new politician, but instead a very gifted and charismatic actor, who, in skillful fashion, can talk about utopian politics but then backstep, hedge, and get away with more than anyone since Bill Clinton in his prime in 1992 (one of the reasons that those two dislike each other so is that they are so much alike) — and that is not such a bad thing after all.

So while Obama is hurt in the primaries, and perhaps mortally so in the general election (the white working classes have a long memory), he will probably get the nomination, because his base will overlook all the above: they despise George Bush, will do anything to prevent another Republican in the White House, are tired of the Clintons, and feel Obama offers them symbolic capital, making them liked abroad and free of guilt at home.

That really says it.

For Democratic voters - particulary the virulent Bush-haters in the base of the party - Obama is the complete antithesis of the Bush/Cheney cabal: a non-white, far-left candidate, likely to recoil from the deployment of millitary force, and certainly geared by upbringing to implement orthodox hard-left policies on race, rights, taxes, and social policy.

I just hope Hanson's white working-class voters stick to their guns, handing an Obama candidacy a defeat of Dukakis-sized proportions.