Barack Obama opened Pandora's Box last year when he ventured into a race . . . race trying to court African American voters, who wanted to know if Obama was black enough. Pandora's Box generated huge African American support for him, which has almost won him the Democratic nomination, but now appears to be threatening his ability to win the actual White House.
Juan Williams of ABC News commented on Good Morning Today in a way that suggest that Barack Obama is now trying to call on his white heritage and distance himself away from his African American pastor and church after comments made over the years by his pastor were heavily exposed on television and YouTube.
"This has caught him up in the middle of a very racial dispute," ... "One that seems to separate black and white and suggested that [Obama] came into that community wanting to be identified with the black community, at a time when he was questioned as to whether or not he was authentically black. Now, he's trying to distance himself from that very church and say he didn't know things that he obviously had to know." ABC News: Obama in Cross Hairs For Pastor Remarks
Obama has tried to present himself as a solution to people of all walks of life, but the rhetoric of his primary supporter and mentor have proven to be anything but open to people of all walks of life. This could point to poll results that showed Hispanic voters unease at voting for Barack Obama. It could also explain the flow of white voters to Barack Obama when he appeared to be someone that could get the job done and heal the country and then the rip tide of white voters away from Barack Obama when it was revealed that he was mired in the slime of corrupt Chicago politics via his $250 million back Rezko that helped him to by his family dream home and when his Pastor started preaching denunciations of Hillary Clinton on Christmas claiming that she was not an acceptable Democratic candidate because she had never been called the same racial epithets that Barack Obama may have.
Ironically, Hillary Clinton has probably been called every other name in the book by her detractors. I don't think anyone in the Hillary camp has tried to claim that Barack Obama isn't fit to be President because he hasn't been called a female dog.
I realize that the Democratic Party was labeled early on with the Jackass and that Andrew Jackson wore the label proudly as jackasses were symbols of hardworking Americans back in his day, but it seems ludicrous that Obama's Pastor, who is famously intellectual, could really believe that a person can not feel the pain and lead the country if they have not been called every name in the book. A presidential candidate need not be vetted by sitting down and being lambasted with bad words, curses and worse in order to qualify for the job. We are not trying to choose a candidate like a person walking through an ala carte food line picking up a candidate here, and poring some curses over them there and sprinkling some verbal abuse there and complimenting the abuse with some veiled racism side orders or hate crime threat innuendo muffins there.
This is not the way politics of raised expectations work. If a candidate or campaign wants to increase expectations and truly bring hope they don't filter voters through a directbuy process to choose a candidate with beliefs at rock bottom prices lowered by a lifetime of verbal assaults. The candidate must emphasize the positive and what can be done. They must raise the bar higher and not rely on surrogates to chop the bar lower or even allow surrogates to smack the bar to the ground preventing opponents from passing through.
It therefore seems only too probably that Obama's preacher purposefully wanted to use Barack Obama's 50% African heritage to win him some votes. There are a lot of very good reasons why African Americans could choose to support Barack Obama but supporting him simply on the basis that he's been called a name that I will not put into print but his Pastor will use in front of the congregation on Christmas and send video out to the world to watch is exactly what Obama charge the Clinton campaign with in December. Obama's Pastor was engaging in race baiting and its a despicable practice no matter which campaign deploys it.
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