Obama's Pastor Snub: Sign of a Bigger Problem?

"Obama slights his own pastor, another error in wooing blacks" (Chicago Sun Times)

Mary Mitchell writes:

"Obama took some bad advice from campaign staff who underestimated the impact such a slight could have on a candidate who has to woo the black vote. Now, the shuttered prayer has come back to haunt him.

Although sources close to the campaign assured me that the relationship between Obama and Wright is "closer than ever," in an interview with the Times, Wright "expressed disappointment but no surprise" that Obama "might try to play down their connections."

And Mitchell brings up an issue Barack Oblogga touched on last month -

"...this entire incident provides some insight into a missing ingredient in Obama's campaign stew.

"First of all, I don't know who you would call in Barack Obama's campaign," Conrad Worrill told me.

Worrill is the national chairman of the National Black United Front, and a longtime grass-roots political organizer across the country. If he doesn't know who to call, that's a problem.

"It is clear that black people want to support his candidacy," Worrill said. "What is missing is an African-American at a high level to assist in structuring black participation in his campaign in black communities across the country."

Obama's campaign claims this is not a matter of "neglect," but that Obama's had a slow start in putting together his staff. Two weeks ago, he brought Ertharin Cousin on board as a senior adviser for African-American and women's outreach."

The South Carolina Split

From foxcarolina.com

COLUMBIA, S.C. Illinois Senator Barack Obama will be speaking to the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus at a special event next month.

Obama's selection comes after a disagreement with supporters of New York Senator Hilliary Clinton.The Caucus' invitations committee had already invited Obama and he had accepted when Clinton supporters questioned the selection.

Charleston Senator Robert Ford and Hopkins Senator Darrell Jackson had questioned the invitation, but conceded yesterday.Orangeburg Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter says it's important to have Obama speak as an example to young African-Americans.She says Obama's candidacy is historic. Others point to campaigns by Greenville native Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Shirley Chisolm and Carol Moseley Braun.

Forget New Hampshire, and Iowa....it's gonna be all about South Carolina in 2008. Dems need to get a reality check from John McCain on just how crazy Sowf Carolacky can be.

• "Clinton can't bounce Barack" (NY Post)
  

The Bill Factor

The overflow crowd outside Brown's Chapel where Barack Obama was speaking was clearly larger than the one outside First Baptist where Hillary Clinton was in the pulpit. But neither one of them caused the kind of excitement among the crowds that former President Bill Clinton elicited whenever his shock of white hair appeared.

From the Montgomery Advertiser:

An estimated 8,000-11,000 people walked across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge Sunday afternoon, the most to take part in the bridge crossing celebration since almost 20,000 people came in 2000 to see then President Bill Clinton.

Although presidential hopefuls Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton joined a list of civil rights notables in the annual commemoration of “Bloody Sunday“ as well as the successful march from Selma to Montgomery, it was Bill Clinton who was once again the star.

“He’s a rock star. There is just no other word for it,” said Kaye Ivy, 31, of Tuscaloosa. Her 12-year-old Lantz Lipham shook hands with Hillary Clinton and Obama, but started shouting “I got his picture,” when he got a picture of Bill Clinton with his cell phone. The crowd applauded.

Camera flashes were like a strobe light as the former president stepped out of his security vehicle to join in the march. Following the march he was inducted into the National Voting Rights Museum Hall of Fame.

“We want Bill to be the president again!“ said Robin Rembert of Selma. Getting out her cell phone, she began frantically calling a friend. “This is who I’ve been waiting to see all day,“ Rembert said. “I love Bill Clinton.“

But can Bill transfer his popularity to Hill in quantities large enough to beat Obama?
CNN's Queen Crowley asks that very question.

Playing Nice in Selma...But Still Need Buffers

From the NYT
"The visit to Selma, a historically rich, economically struggling city, became a proxy battle for black support between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, whose candidacy represents a threat to Mrs. Clinton’s traditional base. That competitive dynamic intensified on Sunday with the debut of Mr. Clinton on the campaign trail, six weeks into his wife’s bid, and among a bloc of voters who are at once devoted to the former president and torn between his wife and Mr. Obama.It was the first side-by-side appearance of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in the 2008 presidential campaign, and the political theater of the two campaigns overlapped repeatedly, but with a polite tone that contrasted with their political skirmishing of recent weeks."

Guess Who's Coming to Selma: Barack and Hillary

A new poll shows Obama gaining in popularity among black voters - and this trip to the site of the Civil Rights Movement's "Bloody Sunday" is sure to give him an even stronger foothold in the demographic. Listen to Senator BO's interview on NPR.

Barack Obama Snubs "Covenant With Black America"?

Hey David Axelrod.
Come here for a second.
Lookit.
Are there any Black people at AKP? If there are, do you listen to any of them? Because I'm sure they could have told you quick, fast, and in a hurry that the annual "Covenant With Black America" was today...and it is a HUGE deal. Not among Black people in general - because there are millions who don't care about Tavis Smiley's forum on all things Black - but among Black people who VOTE...it's big.

The Black peop...um person in your office would have told you that his aunts and uncles and cousins would not be standing out in the cold watching Barack Obama talk about Lincoln on Saturday. They would be bundled up in front of the TV watching Tavis...that is until PBS interrupted the proceedings to show the junior senator from Illinois.

No matter what you've told yourselves about not having Barack align himself with the steeped-in-the-civil-rights-movement-Black-power-vanguard...these folks matter.
Don't get me wrong. We get it...Obama has to be the candidate of inclusion, and he's got corporate money so he doesn't need little Black man money, etc. etc. But scheduling Obama's coming out party on the exact same day as the CWBA meeting was a slap in a collective and frowning Black face. See?



Even Obama supporter Charles Ogletree (Harvard Law Professor) says Barack made a mistake.




Fine Team Obama. Push ahead with your strategy and minimize the Jackson and Sharpton photo-ops. But don't do stuff to openly antagonize. Announcing on Presidents Day? Better. Sure, it is not a slow-news-day Saturday...but it is a holiday so none of the bigwigs would be in the offices at the newtorks - ensuring some fluffy coverage.

Believe me.
Or don't.
But just remember. Next year when you're trying to think of somewhere else to be, Hillary will be more than happy to take your seat at the "Covenant" table - or worse...she'll send the man who has already been dubbed America's First Black President to take her place.

Esteemed Black Historian Deems Obama's Lincoln-Heavy Speech Ironic

Senator Barack Obama made his announcement at the Old State Capitol in Springfield Illinois...where Abraham Lincoln gave his "House Divided " speech in 1858.

Obama said:
"And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States..."

"As Lincoln organized the forces arrayed against slavery, he was heard to say: "Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought to battle through."
That is our purpose here today.
That's why I'm in this race."

But at the annual Covenant With Black America gathering in Virginia, historian Lerone Bennett called Obama's constant evocation of Lincoln ironic. Watch.

Barack and the Black Community

Blacks appear lukewarm on Barack Obama presidential bid (The Louisiana Weekly)

"(Taylor Media Services) It could be because he has no history in the Civil Rights Movement or because it appears he is being promoted by the white media. Regardless, several recent reports suggest that the presidential ambitions of Black Illinois senator Barack Obama is receiving only lukewarm support among other Blacks.

Radio talk show host George Wilson concluded recently that based on views expressed by his listeners, Obama is "not getting as much of an enthusiastic send-off from black people as he is from whites."

Sharpton Asks Where's the Obama Beef? (New York Press)

"Right now we're hearing a lot of media razzle dazzle," Sharpton said. "I'm not hearing a lot of meat, or a lot of content. I think when the meat hits the fire, we'll find out if it's just fat or if there's some real meat there."

Update: 1/15/07

"Regular" Black Folks Split on Obama (Chicago Sun-Times)

Black Leaders Wary of Obama (Newsmax.com)

Barack's Black Woman Bounce

"America's Next First Lady" says:
More reasons for Bill and Hill to worry about team Obama.
From the Dec. 25th 2006 issue of Newsweek:

" Another African-American woman in Congress, who asked not to be identified for fear of offending the Clintons, says, "If her (Hillary Clinton's) base is black women, it vanishes down to zero" if Obama gets in. The fact that Obama is married to an African-American woman (Michelle Obama, a vice president of the University of Chicago Hospitals) is critically important to this constituency."

And what else do we know about this constituency? High-profile Democratic strategist and usually dead-on all around political guru Donna Brazile (more on this First Lady of her field later...) said in Essence magazine that black women are:

"the most loyal and consistent voters in American politics. Without us, there would be no Senator... Hillary Clinton of New York."

And now it can be extrapolated that without them perhaps there will be no President Hillary Clinton of the United States.
The Bill/Hill picture gets even bleaker when you throw in an Obama endorsement from Queen Oprah. Once the big "O" speaks, Hillary can kiss at least 14 million crucial votes good-bye. That sum is the number of African American women who will "vote Michelle", plus their menfolk's ballots - which you can bet will also be marked for Obama...or else.

And who says the race isn't about America's Next First Lady?