Blogging Politics: Network Effects and the Hierarchy of Success

Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell have edited a special issue of Public Choice on the political power of the blogosphere.

In their introductory empirical article, "The Power and Politics of Blogs," the authors hypothesize how network effects tend to push the most popular blogs to the top of the blogosphere:

We argue that bloggers and readers face an important coordination problem, which may be analyzed as a pure coordination game. The problem is as follows. Most bloggers wish to maximize their readership, but face very substantial difficulties in gaining new readers. Given the vast number of blogs even in the political subsection of the blogosphere, it is extraordinarily hard for them to attract readers, even when they have something interesting and unique to offer. Blog readers, for their part, want to find interesting blog posts—in terms of either new information or a compelling interpretation of old information. However, given search costs and limited time, it is nearly impossible for readers to sift through the vast amounts of available material in order to find the interesting posts.

Blogs with large numbers of incoming links offer both a means of filtering interesting blog posts from less interesting ones, and a focal point at which bloggers with interesting posts, and potential readers of these posts can coordinate. When less prominent bloggers have an interesting piece of information or point of view that is relevant to a political controversy, they will usually post this on their own blogs. However, they will also often have an incentive to contact one of the large “focal point” blogs, to publicize their post. The latter may post on the issue with a hyperlink back to the original blog, if the story or point of view is interesting enough, so that the originator of the piece of information receives more readers. In this manner, bloggers with fewer links function as “fire alarms” for focal point blogs, providing new information and links. This reduces the need for bloggers at the top of the link structure to engage in “police patrols” to gather information on their own....The skewed network structure of the blogosphere makes it less costly for outside observers to acquire information from blogs. The networked structure of the blogosphere allows interesting arguments to make their way to the top of the blogosphere. Because of the lognormal distribution of weblogs, the media only needs to look at the top blogs to obtain a “summary statistic” about the distribution of opinions on a given political issue. The mainstream political media—which some bloggers refer to as the “mediasphere”—can therefore act as a transmission belt between the blogosphere and politically powerful actors. Blogs therefore affect political debate by affecting the content of media reportage and commentary about politics. Just as the media can provide a collective interpretive frame for politicians, blogs can create a menu of interpretive frames for the media to appropriate.

That's a fairly academic discussion.

The bottom line is their main point about hyperlinking and and trackbacking: To be successful, lower level "9th tier" bloggers need to keep busy signaling important new scoops and stories to those at the top of the blogging chain. Sweet hyperlinks back to the lower tier bloggers drive traffic, familiarity, and with luck, popularity.

But there's a lot more that goes into it, I would argue.

Some bloggers, like Drezner himself, are academics who've built a name in scholarly research, and with that authority - and vigorous self-promotion - they're able to establish a reputation as a "focal point" blogger among fellow academics and the media establishment.

Other bloggers are part of the existing media establishment, like Michael Medved and Michelle Malkin. Their success at blogging is a relative function of their success in radio and television, or perhaps even from the synergistic relationship of all three media (in Malkin's case, especially).

In both examples, academics and media personalities, there's a degree of exposure from related professional activities that helps drive traffic to their homepages.

Other cases are harder to figure out.

Some folks are just darn good bloggers, who write well and build a reputation and following in the online community. Captain Ed is a good example. When he was at Captain's Quarters, he broke some big news stories, working essential as an online journalist. Talking Points Memo has followed a similar trajectory to the top of the left blogosphere.

Then there are those who are just incredibly hip, or something, who've built a large community of readers and linkers who feed off each other in the classic ideological echo chamber. There are too many to name here, but Kos on the left and Power Line on the right seem to fit the classic focal point blogs which are often at the center of some of the top online political debates.

(I'd note that the guys at Power Line are closer to the Captain Ed model than is Kos, in that they've been key in breaking open big media stories, cementing their influence as influential focal point blogs; in contrast, Kos just seems to chum the waters of the extremist, nihilist left, apparently envisioning himself as the center of the universe of the left's contemporary online media environment).

Other than that, some blogs just build popularity through community and a strong message or focus (Screw Liberals comes to mind). These are folks who've got some kind of verve or schtick, and they're able to make a good go of it, largely as an aside to a regular career (or they've got a darn good set of values, like Gayle at Dragon Lady's Den, through which they become good and loyal friends to their readers).

So, is there any advice for the aspiring blogger, who hopes to leap up the rungs of the blogging hiarachy, perhaps at some future point working to bring down a network news anchor or some other feat of citizen's journalism?

Who knows? Most bloggers only generate a few readers, and then burn out after a period of futility of variable duration (that's just from my own observation).

I nevertheless thought Michelle Malkin offered some pretty good advice on how to be a successful blogger, over at Right Wing News:

There are a couple of factors. The first is not to try to be somebody else. If you want to be a success...don't be another Michelle Malkin or Glenn Reynolds or a Drudge wannabe. The marketplace of ideas rewards original ideas and original thinkers and I think having a niche is very important. ...The blogosphere rewards fresh information and reporting, energy, initiative, and...I think a lot of the humor blogs do well, like Iowahawk, Ace of Spades HQ. There are so many people with something unique to add. Plus, it takes a work ethic. You're not going to be successful if you only post 2 or 3 times a day and if you don't have fun doing it, you shouldn't be in it.

That last part's key.

Last summer I had a months-long e-mail exchange with Titus (formerly Angevin13) over at the Punch Die. (Titus has a solid reputation, and was very successful in garnering links, including a couple of "instalanches" from Glenn Reynolds). We were obssessing on how to increase our exposure in the conservative blogosphere, offering each other different tips to drive traffic and blog power.

To be honest, it's awfully hard to build up a regular readership, much less online media influence. But Malkin's last point seems most relevant here: Publish regularly, with lots of original analysis.

As some readers here have noticed, I've really picked up my own publishing volume this year. I didn't really plan it. Things just starting coming together as I was blogging John McCain's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. I got extremely invested in his success, and with all of intensity of the race - and not to mention the outbreak of McCain Derangement Syndrome - my blog started getting a lot of attention, links, and even solictations for advertising.

I'm still down on the lower rungs (the 9th tier, I imagine), but some days I get all kinds of links from high-traffic blogs like Gateway Pundit, and from aggregation sites like Blog Report, Memeorandum, and RealClearPolitics.

But as I used to tell Titus: Blogging's not my career. I'm a father, a husband, and a professor of political science. Though I must admit, sometimes that order gets a bit discombobulated amid the considerable affliction I've got with my own citizen's journalism!

Resilience of Power: The Strategic Implications of Iraq

This entry is a follow-up to my Sunday post, "The Lessons of Iraq."

In that essay Jules Crittenden noted that "Iraq has become the central battlefield in the 21st century's Islamic war..."

Indeed it has, and while challenges continue, our sacrifices are being repaid, as President Bush noted today.

The president also acknowledged the continuing protests against the war. It seems that no degree of military and political progress will deter war opponents from their endless calls for unconditional surrender. The war's routinely disparaged as a disaster, precisely when analysts have identified the long-term positive strategic externalities of our deployment.

Walter Russell Mead, writing in the new American Interest, suggests that the military turnaround in Iraq over the last 15 months demonstrates the phenomenal resilence of American power, with far reaching implications:

First, the prestige of the American military could be significantly enhanced, both at home and abroad. For a liberal democracy to carry out a successful counterinsurgency campaign under a media spotlight is difficult under any circumstances. Many critics of the Iraq war effort argued consistently that such a victory was impossible, and that therefore the only possible course was to stage an American withdrawal in the least humiliating and disruptive way possible. Others, at home and abroad, argued that American military power reflected technological superiority and large budgets, but that both the American military and American society lacked the will and the ability to prevail in tough ground combat.

Defeating al-Qaeda and other Sunni insurgents, while persuading both Sunni and Shi‘a militias in Iraq to pursue their goals through non-military channels, would be a substantial and striking victory in the face of this simple-minded conventional thinking. The American military would emerge from Iraq tempered and tested rather than broken, with a demonstrated capability at counterinsurgency in the Middle East. This could end up a significant factor in international affairs, because it could suggest that the approach of countering American military strength by concentrating on asymmetric warfare might not be quite as promising as some had hoped....

When it comes to the Middle East, the one thing we know we won’t see is a peaceful, happy region where American leadership is trusted and popular. The confrontation with Iran remains explosively dangerous....

But victory, however qualified, will help in a region where the United States will continue to have vital interests in play. Some of these consequences have already been felt. There is some significant polling evidence that, despite constant and even growing dislike of the United States, support for suicide bombing and other terror tactics has fallen in the Arab world in recent years. Al-Jazeera footage of bombs going off in Iraqi markets has not inspired a generation to join al-Qaeda; it has filled far more people with loathing and horror at the gruesome consequences of this form of war. The victims are Arabs, not Americans or Israelis. As the Arab world has watched the insurgency in Iraq with unprecedented immediacy, traditional Arab and Islamic teachings against anarchy and rebellion look more sensible than ever.

Defeat for the insurgents will only strengthen this view. Al-Qaeda will be seen, correctly, as having employed unacceptable tactics and imposed unendurable suffering in Iraq, while achieving nothing. This conspicuous and corrosive failure will not only weaken the appeal of jihadi extremists; it will also strengthen the claims of traditional, sensible religious teachers to speak for the core values of Islamic religion and civilization.

It is likely, too, that a perceived American victory in Iraq, however modest, would contribute to a general reconsideration of American power. Before 9/11, many observers in the United States and abroad significantly overestimated America’s true position in the world. Americans particularly tended to exaggerate America’s global influence and popularity. After 9/11, and even more, after the bungled move into Iraq, the floundering failure of the American occupation, and the country’s descent into chaos, world opinion overcorrected. Widely considered a colossus that could not be stopped in 2000, America came to be seen by 2007 as a badly governed, near-bankrupt country in rapid and irreversible decline.

Having overshot in both directions, the world may now move toward a more sustainable and accurate view of American power and its world role. The United States is likely to remain the world’s largest economy and, in both political and military terms, its most important state for some time to come. Rivals and potential rivals all face constraints and obstacles even more daunting. This re-assessment of the American prospect would likely come regardless of developments in Iraq, but should events there continue to move favorably, many will be struck by the resilience of American power.

See also, Reuel Marc Gerecht, "A New Middle East, After All: What George W. Bush Hath Wrought."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Year of Denial: Obama's Contradictory Statements

ABC News reports that Barack Obama remains plagued by a series of contradictory statements on his relationship to Jeremiah Wright, including his repeated denials of any knowledge of his pastor's incendiary anti-Americanism.

Obama's not off the hook. The longer questions of credibility and veracity remain, the less likely his Philadelphia speech will be seen as Kennedyesque:

Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America's racial divide, Sen. Barack Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons....

His initial reaction to the initial ABC News broadcast of Rev. Wright's sermons denouncing the U.S. was that he had never heard his pastor of 20 years make any comments that were anti-U.S. until the tape was played on air.

But yesterday, he told a different story.

"Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes," he said in his speech yesterday in Philadelphia.

Obama did not say what he heard that he considered "controversial," and the campaign has yet to answer repeated requests for dates on which the senator attended Rev. Wright's sermons over the last 20 years.

Read the whole thing.

Apparently Obama's also been less the forthcoming on the extent of his relationship to Antoin "Tony" Rezko, his Chicago-area political fixer.

But staying with the denials of Wright's inflammatory hatred, be sure check out the latest from Vinegar and Honey:

Do you think that it really accomplished anything? I don't. I think it will serve only to stir up more bitterness and resentment on both sides, and I doubt that anyone was inspired to work on the issue of the great racial divide in this country....

The fact that he denied ever hearing any of the incendiary comments of Reverend Wright, or any knowledge of his strong anti-white establishment feelings, only made himself look worse. At least, today he finally did acknowledge that he knew of some of it, but still tried to justify it.

There you have it, straight from the heartland.

Also, check my big conservative blog roundup on the controversy, "Obama's Speech."

See more, as well, at Memeorandum.

Iraq Five Years In

Today marks the 5th anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

President Bush gave an address this morning marking the start of the war:

“Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision — and this is a fight America can and must win,” President Bush said, according to a transcript of his address at the Pentagon.

The president hailed the courage of the men and women serving in Iraq and said their effort helps protect America.

“Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely that we will face this enemy here at home,” he said.

While much of the media coverage today and tonight will lionize the antiwar left - whose members are protesting today in Washington - the focus today should rightly be on those who've fought for American security and Iraqi democracy.

There's a number of first-person collections of war stories around the web today, and these deserve wide circulation. I was moved by the story of Tim McLaughlin, a Marine first lieutenant, whose personal flag went up on the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, Baghdad, on April 9, 2003 (in the photo above).

McLaughlin shares how he felt after his service in Iraq:

No one has to convince me that there is a difference between the way the world is and the way it should be. I’ll stand for the way the world should be every time. Peace. Human rights. Racial, sexual and religious equality. But when the noise, trouble and hard work get in the way, not everyone makes the same sacrifices. We won’t always get it right, and it’ll never be perfect, but I’m proud of the people I’ve stood with.

See also the entry at Neptunus Lex, "Five Years In":

As for me, five years ago I stood on the bridge of a veteran warship as wave after wave of F-14s and FA-18s, EA-6B Prowlers, E-2 Hawkeyes and S-3 Vikings rattled down the catapults, the thumping of the waterbrakes moving through the ship, the steam from the catapults rising, the afterburners lighting up the night. Heavy laden, wallowing off the deck rather than springing airborne. Worried for them over the beach, wanting desperately to be with them, but assigned other duties. Somebody had to do it....

We left home knowing the importance of the work to come. We trained hard along the way, knowing that the more we sweated, the less we’d bleed. Waited on tenterhooks for months as the diplomatic dance played out. Watched as the temperatures started to rise again, thought about the hundreds of thousands of young men ashore, wearing CBR gear as they waited in the dirt and dust and pondered those things that only infantrymen know when everyone knows it’s coming but it hasn’t happened yet.

We fought hard as hard as we could for weeks, sprinting. And then it was “over,” and we left. Losing two more aircraft on the way home, stupidly. Partied like rock stars in Perth. Ran very low on fuel coming back north, as wild seas made at sea refueling more hazardous than degraded sea keeping. Made it good a few days later south of Indonesia. Picked up Tigers in Pearl. Came home to an exultant country that celebrated us with emails, letters, posters, cheering crowds on the quay and spouting fireboats in the bay. Family on the pier. We came home never doubting that we had done the right thing.

Except it wasn’t over, and we’re still there, at sea and ashore and in the air. And the crowds no longer cheer.

Go on over there and give Neptunus a big thank you.

Show him that some of us still do cheer.

Iraq Pre-2003: The Bipartisan Consensus

Via Ed Driscoll, be sure to watch this YouTube on the bipartisanship surrounding Saddam's Hussein's threat to international security before 2003:

See also Christopher Hitchens, "How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I Didn't."

The Wright Path? Race, Patriotism, and GOP Election Strategy

The Republican Party has long been known for developing winning electoral coalitions around the issues of race, rights, and taxes. Often associated with the "Southern Strategy," the focus on the volatile topic of race has opened up the GOP to charges of insenstivity to the problems of minorities and the poor.

The question of race in 2008 is even greater than in past years, with the potential nomination of the nation's first African-American as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer. Can the GOP campaign effectively against a candidate who seems to personify a post-racial appeal?

The Politico takes a look at how questions of race and patriotism have been put on the agenda by Barack Obama's Wright controversy:

For months, Republican party officials have watched with increasing trepidation as Barack Obama has shattered fundraising records, packed arena after arena with shrieking fans and pulled in significant Republican and independent votes.

Now, with the emergence of the notorious video portraying Rev. Jeremiah Wright damning the country, criticizing Israel, faulting U.S. policy for the attacks of Sept. 11 and generally lashing out against white America, GOP strategists believe they’ve finally found an antidote to Obamamania.

In their view, the inflammatory sermons by Obama’s pastor offer the party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a powerful motivating force for the conservative base.

In fact, the video trove has convinced some that, after months of praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she arouses, that they may actually have easier prey.

“For the first time, some Republicans are rethinking Hillary as their first choice,” said Alex Castellanos, a veteran media consultant who recently worked for Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Even Obama’s much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial reconciliation, failed to shake the notion that Republicans had been given a rare political gift.

It's no wonder.

Wright's preachings are repudiated by nearly everyone in the United States.

The GOP rightly has an election issue of legitmate concern to a majority of Americans - people who truly love their country, and who differentiate between our actions as the leading democratic nation state, a nation in the lead in the West's progess on race, rights and political inclusion.

Obama's Non-Transcendentalism

Barack Obama's racially-charged scandal is the most gripping episode so far in an election already bound for the history books as the most fascinating in decades.

Yet one of the most important developments in the campaign to date took place Tuesday in Philadelphia, with Obama's speech on race and religion. For all Obama's oratorical power, the Wall Street Journal characterized the speech as frankly mundane in its non-transcendental implications:

The political tide for Barack Obama was inconceivable as recently as a few months ago, and it may still carry him into the White House. A mere three years out of the state legislature, the Illinois Senator has captured the Democratic imagination with his charisma, his silver tongue, and most of all, his claims to transcend the partisan and racial animosities of the day.

But the suddenness of Mr. Obama's rise allowed him, until recently, to evade the scrutiny that usually attends Presidential campaigns. If nothing else, the uproar over Reverend Jeremiah Wright has changed that. In Philadelphia yesterday, the Senator tried to explain his puzzling 20-year attendance at Reverend Wright's Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, while also using his nearly 5,000-word address to elaborate on the themes that have energized his candidacy. It was an instructive moment, though not always in the way the Senator intended....

Mr. Obama sought to rehabilitate his image by distancing himself from Mr. Wright's race-paranoia. He talked about his own multiracial background - son of a white mother and Kenyan father - and said, "I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."

Mr. Wright's remarks "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country," Mr. Obama continued, and are "not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity" - his way of broadening out the discussion to include his political message.

Less uplifting was his attempt to pair Mr. Wright's extremism with Geraldine Ferraro's recent remarks as "the other end" of the spectrum on race. Mr. Wright's sermons are rooted in a racial separatism and black liberation theology that is a distinct minority even among African-Americans. Ms. Ferraro was, at worst, saying that Mr. Obama is helped because many Americans want to vote for someone who is black.

It is also notable that Mr. Obama situated Mr. Wright within what the Senator sees as the continuing black-white conflict and the worst excesses of racial injustice like Jim Crow. He dwelled on a lack of funding for inner-city schools and a general "lack of economic opportunity." But Mr. Obama neglected the massive failures of the government programs that were supposed to address these problems, as well as the culture of dependency they ingrained. A genuine message of racial healing would also have given more credit to the real racial gains in American society over the last 40 years.

The Senator noted that the anger of his pastor "is real; it is powerful," and in fact it is mirrored in "white resentments." He then laid down a litany of American woe: "the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who has been laid off," the "shuttered mill," those "without health care," the soldiers who have fought in "a war that never should have been authorized and never should've been waged," etc. Thus Mr. Obama's message is we "need unity" because all Americans are victims, racial and otherwise; he even mentioned working for change by "binding our particular grievances."

And the cause of all this human misery? Why, "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." Mr. Obama's villains, in other words, are the standard-issue populist straw men of Wall Street and the GOP, and his candidacy is a vessel for liberal policy orthodoxy - raise taxes, "invest" more in social programs, restrict trade, retreat from Iraq.

Needless to say, this is not an agenda rooted in bipartisanship or even one that has captured a national Presidential majority in more than 40 years. It would be unfortunate if Mr. Obama's candidacy were toppled by racial neuroses, and his speech yesterday may have prevented that. But it also revealed the extent to which his ideas are neither new nor transcendent.

See also my earlier post, "Obama's Speech," which includes links to 40 top entries on Obama's address from across the conservative blogosphere.

Obama's Racial Peril

Barack Obama, with his speech today, harnessing the height of his rhetorical power, sought to end his campaign's downward spiral of racial recrimination.

As powerful a speaker as he is, I don't think he closed the deal (see a conservative blog roundup here).

Indeed, as Jim VandeHei and John Harris argue, Obama's address may have unpacked even deeper challenges to his transcendental message:

Barack Obama’s plunge into the race issue in Philadelphia on Tuesday at times sounded more like a sermon than a speech.

But beneath the personal anecdotes and historical allusions, it was a delicately crafted political statement — one that makes clear that Obama understands exactly how much peril he is facing.

Even before the Jeremiah Wright controversy erupted in recent days, voting patterns in several states made clear — for all the glow of Obama’s reputation as a bridge-builder — how uneven his record really is when it comes to transcending deep racial divides.

The Philadelphia speech offered lines calculated to reassure all the groups with which he is most vulnerable.

For working-class whites — whose coolness toward Obama helped tilt Ohio to Hillary Rodham Clinton — Obama spoke with understanding about why they dislike busing and affirmative action. “Like the anger in the black community, these resentments aren’t always shared in polite company,” he said.

For Hispanics, who have sided with Clinton in the vast majority of states this election, he lashed pundits scouring polls for signs of tension between “black and brown” and said the two communities face a common heritage of discrimination and inadequate public services.

Finally, Obama sought to connect with white Jewish voters — potentially one of the rawest nerves of all amid the Wright controversy — denouncing those blacks who see “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.”

It will take weeks, at least until the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, to know whether all of Obama’s political and cultural base-touching succeeded.

Even before that verdict arrives, the speech counts as a remarkable event — most of all for the specificity with which Obama discussed racial attitudes and animosities that politicians usually prefer to leave unmentioned.

Gallup also examines the staggering hurdles for Obama's post-racial agenda:

Barack Obama's major speech on race in Philadelphia Tuesday is a reminder of the continuing, and highly charged, impact of race in American society and in this presidential campaign.

Obama, confronted with the continuing controversy over statements made by his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, tried to limit the damage by discussing what he called "a misunderstanding that exists between the races." Obama's speech presumably had the objective of shoring up as much white support for his presidential candidacy as possible among Democratic voters, particularly in the large state of Pennsylvania, the location for his speech and a state that holds its Democratic primary on April 22....

While Obama's focus at this point is largely on his attempt to win the Democratic nomination, his viability in the general election (should he win the nomination) will also be affected by white voters' views of his candidacy.

I'll have more on this in forthcoming posts.

Obama's Speech

I'm teaching all day, but I've read Barack Obama's major speech today on race and religion, and I've watched video clips of key excerpts (available on YouTube):

As always, I'm impressed by this man's oratorical power.

Yet for all its brilliance, the speech displayed all the standard Democratic Party talking points of grievance and retreat, on the economy and the war.

But what's most troubling is how miserably Obama failed in divorcing himself from the hatred of Jeremiah Wright's theology at Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama appears woefully ill-advised on the imperative of separating himself from Wright's anti-Americanism, teachings so forcefully expressed this week in the outrageous displays of black liberation radicalism.

Here's Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

Although Obama's speech is not without its evasions, I consider it a courageous one by usual political standards. He has refused to walk away from Wright's black liberation theology when it might well have been expedient to do so. The rest of us now should have the courage to take Obama at his word and decide whether it is acceptable to elect as president of the United States someone who carries Rev. Wright around as part of him, and who takes his ranting seriously.

That's key. Obama has not repudiated but reaffirmed as part of his being the very cruelty of which Wright preaches, here, for example:

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 biases that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright ... I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community ... These people are a part of me.

Actually, he could have disowned him, if that's what he truly wanted. He could have shown not just the courage to embrace liberation doctrine, but true stength to renounce that which renounces America.

Note how Kathryn Jean Lopez puts it:

The more I think about this speech, the more I think Obama said: Damn straight, Rev. Wright is angry. That's how I wound up at his church. That's why I stay there. I'm mad too, I just control it better. Now let's get electing me president so we can all feel good.

See all the analysis at Memeorandum.

*********

UPDATE: Checking around the blogosphere, it looks indeed that Obama's controversy's not going to bed:

A Blog For All: "Obama's Hope For Changed Circumstances."

Ace of Spades: "Did I Hear Comments That Might Be Considered Controversial? Yes."

American Princess: "Concentrate On Something Else."

Amy Proctor: "Obama Speech Neglected to Address White Americans."

Atlas Shrugs: "Race Speech: Obama Exploits the Racial Divide."

Astute Bloggers: "Barack the Victim Bill Cosby the Victor."

Blond Sagacity: "Obama Claims Ignorance."

Blue Crab Boulevard: "The Big Speech."

Booker Rising: "Booker Rising on Obama's Speech On Race And Religion."

California Yankee, "Wright Is Wrong And So Is Obama."

Captain Ed: "Obama Speech: Effective for a Narrow Audience."

Charlotte Hays: "The Politics of Grievance."

Confederate Yankee: "Barack's "Race" Speech."

Dr. Sanity: "The Inauthentic Self."

Falling Panda: "Obama Changes His Story."

Fausta: "The Obama Speech."

Gateway Pundit: "Just Words - Obama Gives 1st Major Address to G-D*mned America."

Hot Air: "Obama’s Speech: Consider These Goalposts Moved!"

Jawa Report: "Obama's Ward Churchill Moment."

Jules Crittenden: "Obama Wants to Talk."

LGF: "Obama: Rev Wright is 'An Occasionally Fierce Critic of American Domestic and Foreign Policy'."

Lilberty Pundit: "If You Think This Isn’t About Racism, Think Again."

Michael Goldfarb: "Obama as Mortal: Blame America."

Neo-Neocon: "Did Obama save himself?"

Neptunus Lex: "That Speech."

NIce Deb: "Was Obama’s Speech A Success?"

Opinionnation: "Obama: I Don’t Hate Whitey and the Jews!"

Outside the Beltway: "Obama’s ‘More Perfect Union’ Speech."

Pajamas Media: "Obama's Speech Calls for Victimhood Coalition."

Patterico: "My Two Cents about Obama’s Race Speech."

PoliGazette: "A More Perfect Union."

Protein Wisdom: "Does Barack Obama’s Religion Matter?"

QandO Blog: "Obama's Speech: Mixed Bag."

Ross Douthat: "Obama's Speech."

Sister Toldjah: "Barack Obama’s Moral Equivalence-Fest."

The Strata-Sphere: "Obama Fails, and Admits Indirectly to Not Being Honest."

Suburban Guerilla: "Post-Speech."

TigerHawk: "Notes on the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright kerfuffle ."

Urban Grounds: "Barack Obama Schucks and Jives His Way Through Racism Speech."

Wake Up America: "Obama Rationalizes Wright's Rhetoric."

The Stakes for Obama

Barack Obama's speech today on race and religion in politics will be the pivotal event of his historic campaign. As Peter Wehner noted yesterday:

This is the worst crisis the Obama campaign has faced. It has done deep and perhaps long-term damage by calling into question the judgment and credibility of the junior senator from Illinois. And it badly undermines Obama’s claim that he is a figure who can bind up America’s racial wounds....

Until now Barack Obama has run a remarkable campaign and has shown himself to be a man of apparent grace and class, an apostle of hope and unity. But recent events are starting to eat away at the image of Obama. Nothing has done more damage to him, however, than the comments of his pastor Jeremiah Wright. What Obama has said by way of explanation is neither reassuring nor persuasive — and before this story plays itself out, much more damage to the reputation of Barack Obama may be done.

The New York Times mentions Obama's objectives in the address:

Mr. Obama, in a speech Tuesday in Philadelphia, will repeat his earlier denunciations of the minister’s words, aides said. But they said he would also use the opportunity to open a broader discussion of race, which his campaign has said throughout the contest that it wants to transcend. He will bluntly address racial divisions, one aide said, talking about the way they play out in church, in the campaign, and beyond.

Mr. Obama continued to write the speech on Monday evening, which he believes could be one of the most important of his presidential candidacy, aides said. His wife, Michelle, had not been scheduled to travel with him this week, but hastily made plans to be in Philadelphia.

Mr. Obama said Monday that in his speech, to be given at the National Constitution Center, he would “talk a little bit about how some of these issues are perceived from within the black church community, for example, which I think views this very differently.”

The Politico puts the stakes for Obama in perspective:

Democrats who worry that Barack Obama is untested can put their concerns to rest.

The inflammatory rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has confronted Obama with the most severe test of his presidential campaign and, quite likely, of his public career.

He is now facing a full-blown and fast-moving political crisis in which his reputation as a leader with a singular ability to transcend racial divisions and unite Americans is in jeopardy.

A convergence of factors — a media firestorm, a Democratic rival eager to exploit his stumbles and, most of all, a Republican opposition eager to rough up the man they expect to face in the general election — have raised the stakes to new heights for Obama with the speech he will deliver in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning.

A successful address would go a long way toward answering Hillary Rodham Clinton’s complaint that Obama has never shown he can handle the rough-and-tumble nature of modern political combat.

A failure could leave many of the white independent voters — a key group behind Obama’s swift rise in national politics — doubting whether he is really the bridge-builder and healer he has portrayed himself to be.

In either event, the speech marks a significant shift in strategy. Obama initially tried to brush aside the comments by his former pastor as irrelevant to his campaign. A deluge of media coverage showed that was not going to work.

In the past, Obama has made racial issues, and his own precedent-shattering status, a minor note in his message. But Obama said Monday he recognizes that there is no way he is going to become the Democratic nominee without a forthright statement about the role of race in American life.

Actually, Obama's used the race card to undermine critics as he's simultaneously called America to transcend race.

As I've argued, Obama's relationship to Wright raises deeper questions about the nature of the left's revolutionary ideology, found in Marxist-Leninist liberation theology.

It's time for Obama to completely break from such influences. He must completely condemn and repudiate any past or present associations with a theology whose fundamental purpose is revolutionary salvation.

For more analysis, see Tom Bevan, "Obama's Rationale for Bid in Jeopardy Over Wright," and James Kirchick, "Why Obama Can't Escape His Minister.

Check Memeorandum as well.

The Essential Radicalism of Black Liberation Theology

Somewhat overshadowed amid all the noisy politics of Barack Obama's Wright controversy are the ideological underpinnings of the explosive black church teachings at Trinity United Church of Christ. Reverend Jeremiah Wright claims to be teaching black religious liberation from the pulpit. But what's the nature of this theology. The Asia Times takes a look:

Senator Barack Obama is not a Muslim, contrary to invidious rumors. But he belongs to a Christian church whose doctrine casts Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people". At best, this is a radically different kind of Christianity than most Americans acknowledge; at worst it is an ethnocentric heresy.

What played out last week on America's television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of "black liberation theology" and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.

Paul Hinderaker at Powerline elaborates on Obama's relationship to liberation docrtine:

Obama's own writing suggests that his relationship with the Trinity Church and with Jeremiah Wright has been a deep one. He says he attended church regularly, except during specific periods such as after his first child was born. He says Rev. Wright had a significant influence on him and, in fact, played a major role in bringing him to Jesus.

If we take Obama at his word, his relationship with Wright was not pure opportunism. Rather there was an affinity. What was the nature of that affinity?

I think we should stipulate that it was not Wright's most extreme racist and anti-American pronouncements. But it also seems clear that it was not traditional Christian belief either. Obama was not looking for that -- indeed, he had rejected traditional Christianity before encountering Wright. As just noted, Wright brought him to Jesus. More precisely, Wright's brand of Christianity accomplished this.

What is that brand? According to Wright (for example, during his contentious interview with Sean Hannity last year), the brand is liberation theology. Liberation theology sees the Christian mission as bringing justice to oppressed people through political activism. In effect, it is a merger of Christianity with radical left-wing ideology. Black liberation theology, as articulated for example by James Cone who inspired Wright, emphasizes the racial aspect oppression.

It's easy to see why this brand of Christianity, and probably only this brand, could bring a left-wing political activist like Obama to Jesus.

How would the statements of Wright that have recently come to light be viewed in the context of liberation theology? In particular, employing the various terms Obama has used to describe Wrights statements, which ones would be "not particularly controversial," which would be "controversial" or "provocative," and which would be deplorable?

Comments about crimes against Palestinians would, I submit, fall within the mainstream of liberation theology, just as they do for most hard-leftists who don't put Christianity into the mix. Palestinians make the "A List" of oppressed victims of virtually every leftist ideology that sees the world as divided into oppressors and the oppressed.
Comments about the U.S. treating some of its citizens as less than human, or bringing 9/11 on itself, or inflicting AIDs on black people would, I take it, be controversial and provocative even within the world of black liberation theology. One can believe that oppression is rampant and that the U.S. is heavily implicated, without going as far as Wright did in these remarks.

But Wright's remarks seem no worse than controversial and provocative within this framework. An oppressor will go to great lengths to oppress, and it is an open question just how far that imperative extends. Wright offers one possible answer to that question: there are virtually no limits. If that answer were beyond the pale of the black liberation theology of his congregation, Wright would not have survived and prospered there.

Moreover, certain comments of Michelle Obama are surely uncontroversial in the world of black liberation theology. It would, in fact, be most difficult to reconcile pride in America with that theology. The open question for its adherents is how low their estimation of America should be, and how low they think America would stoop. Pride in America would seem out of the question.

In sum, Barack Obama's close and longstanding affiliation with Wright and his church probably does tell us something important about the man. It doesn't tell us that he agrees with Wright's most extreme ravings, but it suggests that Obama is enough of a leftist to be attracted to, and comfortable at, a place where Wright's most extreme views, though controversial and provocative, are not outrageous.

PoliGazette's got a discussion as well.

But let's be more clear about ideological foundations.

Wright speaks of his teachings falling under the larger doctrines of liberation theology that burst upon the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s. Less noted, however, is the deep bed of Marxist-Leninism inherent in liberation theology, revolutionary extorations that go way beyond Biblical interpretations of salvation to promote final justice and uplift for the oppressed - by way of armed force if necessary.

Particularly in Latin America, liberation theology became tantamont to revolutionary agitation. As Lawrence Mayer has argued:

The change in Latin American society ... was encouraged by the transformation of the Roman Catholic Church as a world organization, most notably in the Vatican II Conference of 1963 and the reign of Pope John XXIII. This liberalizing trend in the Church was propelled by changes in the Latin American clergy. The influx of foreign-born priests, especially those of European origin, weakened the hold of the upper classes on the priesthood .... Priests and nuns who believe in liberaton theology subscribe to the idea that the principal function of the Church is to strive for what they see as social justice in this world, as opposed to being merely concerned with salvation in the next. Further, clerics of this school are more concerned with the well-being of their flock and empowerment of the poor and the marginalized in Latin society than with protecting the property and authority of the Church hierarchy....With the advent of liberation theology ... priests and nuns have frequently supported the political left, sometimes even to the point of endorsing radical movements against their governments (emphasis added).

"Radical movements" here would include organizations such as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua. These were groups backed by Fidel Castro's Cuba, who in turn was backed by Moscow. For such revolutionary organizations, the final stage of ideological struggle culminates in the complete obliteration of capitalist authority relations in the advent of national liberation.

This is the context needed to understand the Wright sermons. The most aggressive supporters of black liberation forsee the "chickens coming home to roost" right here in the United States, in the victory of the Marxist-Leninist revolution that completes the world dialectical struggle against the dominant state in the international chain of capitalist-oppressors, the United States.

Barack Obama must completely condemn and repudiate any past or present associations with such revolutionary doctrines.

He's scheduled a major speech to address these concerns.

The event will be a wasted opportunity unless the Illinois Senator addresses the radicalism of black liberation theology directly. The urgency in this demands the renuncation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright himself. If Obama hopes not only to win his party's nomination, but to have a realistic chance of being competitive in the fall general election, his course can include nothing less.

Obama Will Address Nation Tomorrow

Barack Obama plans to deliver a nationwide address tomorrow on the religious and racial controversies surrounding his campaign, the Politico reports.

I imagine voices like Gateway Pundit and Powerline have had a major impact on developments in the story.

In contrast, as Gateway points out, left-wing blogs such as the Huffington Post are pumping up Obama's Wright controversy as "speaking truth to power." Here's this, from HuffPo:

There has been quite a furry over the past week concerning some admittedly controversial statements made by Senator Obama's pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Yet, if we look at Rev. Wright's statements in full context, they are nothing more than a man speaking truth to power. Rather than acknowledge the truth about the dark past of America, and in some instances the present, we are quick to charge anyone who removes the veil of our history, as being racist and/or anti-American.

One of the primary comments criticized by the media is that Senator Obama knows what it means to be a black man in an America controlled by rich, white people. Does the malfeasance lie in the fact that Senator Obama grew up as a black man in America or that America is controlled by rich, white people? Certainly it cannot be the former. It is irrefutable that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are rich, white men in control of economic, social and political policy in America. The question then becomes, is it racist or anti-American to say that America is controlled by rich, white people or is this a truth spoken to power?

Another comment which is more shocking than anything else is Rev. Wright's announcement that Senator Clinton can never know what it means to be a black man in America, and, she has never been called the "n" word. Yet, whether we are speaking of Hillary Clinton or any other white person of privilege in this nation, the fact remains they can never know what it has meant, or what it means, to be a black man in America. Neither can they know how deeply hurtful it is to be called the "n" word or worse yet to be treated as a member of the "n" class. Unfortunately, as progressive as we would like to consider ourselves, racism is alive and well in our society. We have made strives but we still have a long road ahead.

I guess only the most hardened left-wing commentator, at precisely the same time that the Illinois Senator's won more primaries than any black candidate in history, could say "racism is alive and well" in our society.

Most Americans would have a problem with that. For example, Rasmussen reports that an overwhelming majority repudiates Wright's racist and hate-filled views.

"Truth to power" is code language for the revolutionary classes who seek to tear down any vestiges of "white power" that remain, no matter that the same reviled white power structure over the last 50 years has pushed the United States to live out the true meaning of its creed. Progress has come, with great difficulty, of course, but Martin Luther King would never endorse Jeremiah Wright's sermons if he were alive today.

TBogg at FireDogLake does, however.

Why?

Why is it that people at HuffPo, Firedoglake, and all the other Kos-like wannabes, defend Wright's language as truth to power?

Simply because the United States, to advocates of hate ideology, is irredeemably evil - a fundamentally racist and imperialist regime, run by corporate elites for the benefits of the narrow, narrow capitalist oligarchy. Only the revolutionary overthrow of the regime will replace this alleged constitution of violence. Speeches like Wright feed this nihilism, which is never denounced by radical partisans, only embraced. Unfortunatelty, the revolution's been tried, again and again throughout history, with results ending in humanitarian disasters of enormous scale.

Obama, for all his mistakes, is obviously sharp enough to know that Wright's views are disastrously out of touch with the reality of life in the U.S. today.

The question is how far Obama will go in condeming Wright's hatred.

Insurgents or Arabian Wolves: Security Threats in Iraq

The nature of security in Iraq is changing, as indicated by new reports on progress in Iraq:

ABC News reports that 55 percent of Iraqis said life is good in Iraq, with just a quarter indicating that security is the biggest problem they face:

Improved security and economic conditions have reversed Iraqis' spiral of despair, sharply improving hopes for the country's future. Yet deep problems remain in terms of security, living conditions, reconciliation and political progress alike.

Fifty-five percent of Iraqis say things in their own lives are going well, well up from 39 percent as recently as August. More, 62 percent, rate local security positively, up 19 points. And the number who expect conditions nationally to improve in the year ahead has doubled, to 46 percent in this new national poll by ABC News, the BBC, ARD German TV and the Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Without directly crediting the surge in U.S. forces, fewer report security as the main problem in their own lives – 25 percent, nearly half its peak last spring. Forty-six percent say local security has improved in the past six months, nearly double last summer's level.

The number of Iraqis who feel entirely unsafe in their own area has dropped by two-thirds, to 10 percent. And with Sunni Arab buy-in, U.S.-funded Awakening Councils, created to provide local security, are more popular than the Iraqi government itself.

Security, of course, is still an issue, but it turns out that things have improved so much, the media's reporting on new dangers facing the Iraqi people: Arabian wolves:

The bloodthirsty enemy had gathered on the city's perimeter, but this time the locals were ready.

They had formed armed committees similar to the "Sons of Iraq" forces fighting off Al Qaeda in Iraq militants in western Iraq. They were gearing up for a fight.

Their foes had been attacking them with increasing abandon on the outskirts of this river city 145 miles southeast of Baghdad. They struck along the harsh desert plain leading to Saudi Arabia. They came day or night.

Among children, supernatural powers were attributed to these adversaries. They could withstand intense cold, according to legend, and their eyes changed from yellow to orange to green.

There would be no mercy for this enemy. And no negotiations.

The enemy, after all, was packs of hungry gray wolves who had overcome their fears of humans and had begun feasting on livestock, right in front of farmers.

"The locals formed armed groups, exchanging shifts throughout the day in order to protect people, cattle, sheep, and also children and women heading to schools, from those ferocious wolves," said Mohammed abu Reesha. "They appear during the day and don't fear bullets and challenge even men holding rifles."

The Arabian wolf, a subspecies of the gray wolf, is among the most impressive predators in the Middle East. It grows up to 6 1/2 feet long and stands as tall as 3 1/2 feet, weighing up to 120 pounds, said veterinarian Fahad abu Kaheela. It has powerful jaws and can sprint at speeds of 40 mph.

The wolves hunt strategically, organizing themselves into packs and communicating via howls at different tones. They've been prowling Iraq's dusty wastelands for hundreds of years.

But something strange happened this year. Locals believe the wolves must have crossed some threshold of desperation or hunger, reached a tipping point that had prevented them from venturing onto human turf. They overcame their fear of people and began entering towns and villages to feast on sheep and cattle.

One of the things that's happened, obviously, is Iraq's frontier life's returning to the normal patterns of pastoral existence over the millenia.

This is not to discount the terrible violence many Iraqis still experience, as rag-tag bunches of terrorists still seek to overthrow the regime.

But all the left-wing antiwar denials of progress in Iraq look all the more pathetic when for much of the population the most immediate menace is an enemy whose presence long preceded any of those of the current war.

See more at Hot Air, Strata-sphere and Memeorandum.

Brokered Convention Could Sink Divided Democrats

The Democratic Party's divisions this year are reminiscent to 1968, when the party, divided by Vietnam, saw rioting in the streets outside Chicago's summer nominating convention - unrest which presaged the party's general election defeat that fall.

Could a similar run of events befall the Democrats in 2008? Michael Cohen has a tantalizing analysis at the Wall Street Journal:

It has been more than five decades since any political party in America has had a brokered convention, and for political junkies a heated battle at the Democratic convention seems like a tantalizing possibility. But for Democrats, a protracted nomination battle, culminating in a convention fight, could undermine the party's hopes of reclaiming the White House this fall.

Since voters in Ohio and Texas breathed new life into Hillary Clinton's campaign, some have argued that the current stalemate will not hurt the party's candidate come November. After all, as several prominent bloggers have argued, wasn't the 1968 Democratic primary battle worse? Didn't eventual nominee Hubert Humphrey go on to lose by a mere 1% of the popular vote to Richard Nixon? If a bitter Democratic race hurts a party's chances in the general election, shouldn't Humphrey have lost by more?

The current struggle between Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama doesn't hold a candle to 1968. Forty years ago that race was capped by a "police riot" against antiwar demonstrators at the party's national convention in Chicago. However, the lessons of that year should be sobering for Democrats today.

Humphrey won the nomination only to find himself at the helm of a party divided between hawks and doves, blacks and whites, and blue collar and white collar. He wasted critical weeks trying to unite the party instead of laying the groundwork for victory in November. It wasn't until late September that he succeeded at bringing Democrats together by pledging a conditional halt to bombing runs against North Vietnam, and appealing to labor by forcefully attacking independent candidate George Wallace.

After, turning his fire on Wallace and Nixon, Humphrey's poll numbers dramatically improved and nearly won him the election. But in the end, his defeat was devastating for Democrats. Four years earlier, Lyndon B. Johnson had crushed Barry Goldwater with 61% of the popular vote. In 1968, Humphrey won just 43%. The nomination fight had exposed fissures that Humphrey was not able to close by Election Day, and which continue to divide Democrats.

While divisions among Democrats today are not as severe, a drawn-out nomination fight could leave the party critically short of the time it will need to build a winning campaign. Recent exit polls show that 20%-30% of Democratic voters will be dissatisfied if their candidate loses the nomination. Those numbers will likely increase if the battle between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama intensifies, and especially if it ends in a bitter squabble over delegates at the convention. Although Democrats are more ideologically unified than any time in recent memory, the party's nominee will still have serious fences to mend. Mrs. Clinton would need to reach out to blacks and first-time voters. Mr. Obama would have to win over blue-collar voters. Unfortunately, with the convention in late August, whoever the nominee is will have little time to unify Democrats. In just two months, he or she will have to bridge party divides while also rolling out a general election campaign against John McCain. As the kids say, good luck with all that.

Cohen doesn't mention the latest controversies stirring the Democrats, from Obama's Wright controversy to the Clinton campaign's call for a blogging backlash against the Obama campaign's planned assault on Hillary.

Not only that, Cohen might be downplaying the Democratic divisions this year. While we have not had massive antiwar street protests and violence on the scale of the Vietnam era divisions, much of the radical antiwar and oppositional sentiment is unleashed online. We're seeing a level of political alienation with establishment politics that rivals earlier eras, but is challenging in new ways.
The left blogosphere holds itself up as the new grassroots of the Democratic Party, mounting a puritanical campaign against big pro-war Democrats such as Senator Joseph Lieberman. If Barack Obama - who's the hope of the alienated left-wing fringe - ends up losing to Clinton at a brokered convention, the 1968 analogy could prove more powerful than many suspect.

Already, under-the-radar left-wing cells are planning for major "direct action" against the Democrats at the Denver convention in August. If radical organizations were to combine with larger numbers of disaffected groups - especially the same college-age cohorts who've turned out in massive numbers for Obama's nominating caucuses - the possibilty of a more full-blown 1968-style conflict can't be entirely ruled out.

My blogging buddy, Jan, who blogs over at Vinegar and Honey, forsees racial unrest on the scale of the Watts riots in 1965:

With the current racial divide in this country, it is not a stretch to think that if Senator Obama, for any reason, loses the election that there will be a revolt unequalled by any other that we've seen here. Again, I believe, the white establishment will be targeted, in the belief that the election was stolen from him in some way. Add to this the mindset that there is no justice for blacks, and that they still do not have equal rights.

I'm sympathetic to the argument, although I would suggest that rather than a localized, spontaneous revolt, a broader, underground movement to violently disrupt the Democrats in Denver could emerge as the result of months of planning among hard-line groups currently making up the nihilist antiwar organizational structure.

We're already seeing efforts to "recreate '68," so, again, possibilties are in the air, especially as more and more "insider" radicals - who regularly proclaim their solidarity with the world's socialist revolutionary forces - become increasingly disillusioned and more open to dramatically unconventionial (and potentially violent) political mobilization.

See also, the Politico, "Antiwar Movement Wrestles with 1968."

White Men Emerge as Key Voting Constituency

Will this election be remembered as "The Year of the Man," or the white man, to be more specific?

It could be.

In a campaign season increasingly dominated by hard-left identity political and anti-patriotic demonization of the United States, the political dynamics of the election have shifted attention to the role of white male voters, who could end up being a key constituency supporting Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party's upcoming primaries.

The Washington Post has the story:

In the fierce campaign between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, a battle dominated by questions of race and gender, white men have emerged as perhaps the single critical swing constituency.

The competition for the support of white men, particularly those defined as working class, will shape the showdown between Clinton and Obama in Pennsylvania's Democratic presidential primary on April 22. Obama (Ill.) won majorities among those voters in what appeared to be breakthrough victories in Wisconsin and Virginia last month. But he badly lost working-class white men to Clinton (N.Y.) in Ohio and Texas two weeks ago, keeping the outcome of the Democratic race in doubt indefinitely.

The results in Ohio in particular raised questions about whether Obama can attract support from this crucial demographic. They also brought to the forefront the question of whether racial prejudice would be a barrier to his candidacy in some of the major industrial battlegrounds in the general election if he becomes the Democratic nominee.

An examination of exit polls in Wisconsin and Ohio, states with striking similarities, shows that many more working-class white men in Ohio said race was a factor in their vote on March 4 than was the case in Wisconsin. The analysis makes clear that race was not the deciding factor in the Ohio primary but did contribute to Clinton's margin of victory.

In the past week, racial issues have dominated the campaign dialogue. Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro was forced to quit the Clinton campaign after her comments about Obama and race brought sharp criticism from the senator and his allies.

On Friday, Obama had to distance himself from his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., former pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, over statements widely viewed as being anti-American. Obama has been a member of the church for two decades.

Obama's advisers have sought to play down the idea that racial prejudice was a major factor in Clinton's victory in Ohio. They suggest that Obama's poor performance among working-class white men reflects broader generational divisions that have marked the Democratic race.

David Axelrod, senior adviser to Obama, said he is uncertain how concerned the campaign should be about the influence of race on working-class white voters. "It bears some closer examination," he said. "I think for older voters, it's more of a leap than for younger voters. But I don't think it's an insuperable barrier."

Obama has sought to transcend race in his campaign, and found considerable success in that pursuit in many states. Racial divisions have shown up in Southern states, as they did last Tuesday in Mississippi and earlier in Alabama. In both primaries, Obama overwhelmingly carried the black vote and Clinton overwhelmingly carried the white vote. But in smaller states outside the South -- such as Iowa, Kansas and Utah -- where there are far fewer minorities, Obama has done extremely well with white voters.

The implications of these trends go beyond the Democratic Party.

In Zogby's recent poll showing John McCain leading possible dead-head matchups in the general election, the data indicate that McCain runs strong against Obama in generic mathcups and with the male demographic:

An interesting factor in this race: the inroads McCain has made into Obama’s base and vice versa. McCain wins 19% support from Democrats, while Obama captures just 67% of voters in his own party. Obama wins 15% support among Republicans, compared to 73% for McCain....

Among men, McCain leads Obama 48% to 34%, while Obama holds a slim 43% to 41% edge over McCain among women.

White Americans are more likely to vote than ethnic minorities, so, depending on the nature of the fall campaign itself, the same trends that may help Hillary Clinton in April, could bolster the GOP ticket in the fall, with either a woman or a black as the Democratic nominee.