I'm calling it: Clinton over Obama

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama's long-time minister, has spoken at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. His comments included:

You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles.

...

MODERATOR: What is your motivation for characterizing Senator Obama's response to you as, quote, "what a politician had to say"? What do you mean by that?

REVEREND WRIGHT: What I mean is what several of my white friends and several of my white, Jewish friends have written me and said to me. They've said, "You're a Christian. You understand forgiveness. We both know that, if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected."

Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable.

...

MODERATOR: In your sermon, you said the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. So I ask you: Do you honestly believe your statement and those words?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Have you read Horowitz's book, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola," whoever wrote that question? Have you read "Medical Apartheid"? You've read it?

(UNKNOWN): Do you honestly believe that (OFF-MIKE)

REVEREND WRIGHT: Oh, are you -- is that one of the reporters?

MODERATOR: No questions...

(CROSSTALK)

REVEREND WRIGHT: No questions from the floor. I read different things. As I said to my members, if you haven't read things, then you can't -- based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.

...

See a transcript of his speech here. I'm not sure I even excerpted the good bits - for example the questionable comments re Israel. There's strong stuff in there.

As I see it, this will be the death of Obama's candidacy. Primarily because it makes him unelectable at the general election. A strongly-worded denunciation of Wright by Obama is not credible (and in fact, Obama gained substantial praise for the way he dealt with the last eruption) and at some stage the chickens will come home to roost.

These remarks, combined with what has been said before and what appears likely to come, are just too perfectly suited to attack ads. Obama's credibility with middle America (as opposed to the people Australia calls 'chardonnay socialists') cannot survive being linked to this stuff.