“In my home state of Pennsylvania Hillary has a nearly 20 point lead,” writes HE reader George Bolanis. ” We were expecting an HRC win but that margin is crazy. You know the deal of the Pennsytucky factor in the central part of the state. But even in the metro areas she seems to have a comfortable lead. The exit polls on swing white voters in OH was very telling.

“I have a feeling the ship is heading the wrong way for Obama and that he is going to lose momentum and perhaps the chance of brokering a nomination. While yesterday’s speech was magnificent, people like my in-laws just can’t get past his ‘angry’ and ‘dogmatic’ church.”
To which I replied, “And your in-laws are in their….what, 50s? Older? Over the past several months many fair-minded older folks have been responding to, or at least have tried to focus on, the positive, uplifting aspects of Obama and his candidacy while at the same time (and most of them will never admit to this) suppressing their gut feelings about African Americans. The Reverent Wright thing gives them license to vent those repressed feelings. That’s all that’s going on here.
“Yesterday’s speech reminded me once again that Barack Obama is the best man to come along for the presidency in decades. He said exactly the truth of the matter in yesterday’s speech — nailed it straight and true — and I believe in him wholeheartedly. If Hillary wins by 8% or 10% in Pennsylvania, it’s nothing. But if she beats him by 20%, he’s in some kind of trouble. The ugly tide has been rising in recent days. Fear, ignorance and stupidity have always been strong currents among American proles — always been that way, always will be.
“I think Obama will probably still win North Carolina, and there’s certainly no re-ordering the delegate math. And the Michigan re-vote bandwagon is all but stopped in its tracks. But the gutter-residing Hillary Clinton and the forces of the American Malignancy have managed to cast Obama as the black candidate, which is a tragedy of immense proportion.

“The America that has been routinely derided by Brits and Europeans for its stupidity and butt-ugly racism is rearing up again, and it’s not just my face that is curdling with disgust. It’s not healthy or productive to give yourself over to hate, but I have loathed and despised the beer-gut rank-and-filers all my life, starting with the construction workers beating up on anti-war protesters in the early ’70s and this same crowd’s refusal to consider the Watergate scandal as it evolved and so on down the line, and I’m feeling it again big-time.
“I’m angry at the Obama team for not stepping up sooner and putting HIllary’s bullshit into its place. A friend told me this morning he feels Obama is basically Adlai Stevenson, which is kind of a damning thing to say. But the greater damnation belongs to the race-card players, for whom Hillary has been their Joan of Arc. Obama spoke more frankly and plainly yesterday than he ever has, and he has another big speech to make today and another tomorrow. But an awful lot of people don’t want to know from nuthin’.
“And if the super-delegates start to get really scared and threatened by the dumb-asses turning away from Obama in the voting, all bets are off. In the words of Tracy Morgan, ‘We are a racist country….the end.'”
To which Bolanis replied, “The Rev. Wright thing brings out mistrust because his words are divisive and extreme. I know many people who are sick of listening to the complaints of the Sharptons, Jacksons and Wrights, that many of the social ills of the black community are self-inflicted. Barack addresses this but his church will scare whitey.”

To which I replied with a palpable sigh, “But Obama is not one of them, and has expressed himself repeatedly to this end. Does he feel obliged to make room for their views, or at least not condemn thing in a public way? Yes, just as John McCain, looking to gather as much reactionary-conservative support as possible. is obliged to make room for the rancid nutbag views of certain wackjob preachers who are standing by him.
“Wackjob preachers are ubiquitous. The Rev. Billy Graham once spoke to Richard Nixon in the White House about controlling the Jews, or words to that effect. C’mon, man….this is one-sided.”
To which Bolanis replied, “The Wright thing doesn’t affect me but the old guard will be put off and this can be a swift-boat issue. The difference here is that there has not been an orator with a command of language and the smarts of Obama for a long time to take the stage, so it will not be as easy as it was with Kerry, but this will prey on a deeper well of black water.”