May 31, 2008

Obama quits Trinity United Church of Christ

The AP reports:

Barack Obama said Saturday he has resigned his 20-year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago "with some sadness" in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and more recent fiery remarks at the church by a visiting priest. ...

"This was one I didn't see coming," Obama said Saturday when he [was] asked if he had anticipated the firestorm that would erupt over his relationship with Wright.

Huh? "This was one I didn't see coming?" What kind of would-be President of the United States wouldn't see this one coming? Heck, I saw it coming for him in March 2007.

Of course, the latest Trinity brouhaha doesn't directly concern Wright, it involves a well-known far leftist Catholic priest, Michael Pfleger, who was invited to preach at Trinity by Wright's successor Otis Moss III. A month ago, Obama said of Moss, “Well, the new pastor, the young pastor, Reverend Otis Moss, is a wonderful young pastor.”

As I've said, Obama is running a Karl Rove style campaign designed to do the absolute minimum to get him 51% of the Democratic vote and 51% of the general election vote.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

No Steve, he's gunning for the Media and the hip people.

If he wanted 51% he would have dumped Trinity ages ago. He would have picked a fight, looked noble, and Clintonian triangulation.

Obama dumped this on Saturday, to avoid press coverage and "move on." Methinks there *IS* video of Michelle Obama screaming about Whitey at Trinity.

He looked dumb and clueless in the presser at SD. Quayle time. Obama is not very smart. He might barely be dragged over the primary finishing line by a Dem party that hates/loathes the Clintons.

In the general, he's toast. He won't get any white blue collar votes. The videos won't go away, there's more of them, they're going to be posted all over YouTube and elsewhere, Michelle screaming will particularly devastating.

Consider this, even Ned Lamont in CT lost to Joe Lieberman, because blue collar people saw Sharpton and Jackson on the podium with Lamont, and that's all it took. Even in CT there weren't enough Kos-style yuppies.

I don't see Rovian skill and calculation here, rather poor Chicago-style racial politics that aren't working on the national stage. Without the Press and Dems hating the Clintonian compromises, Obama would be nowhere. When pressed, Obama falls back on South-side style politics which won't cut it.

What's interesting is to see if the Daley machine falls apart in it's internal contradictions: the interests of White Ethnics and Blacks are completely opposed and probably could only be contained if the attitudes of both were concealed by smothering PC and a complacent Press corps.

What cell phone video cameras, YouTube, and other places do is make any public speech or behavior available to anyone, any time, any place. Michael Richards found that out, and so will Obama.

Anonymous said...

Don't let's be too complaisant. Obama is still very dangerous. No one loses automatically. He must continue to be pushed and shoved toward the losers' circle. He will lose only if he is piled on, big-time, NOW. So let the fun begin.

Anonymous said...

I still maintain that Obama is being forced into a Rovian strategy and that it wasn't his intent to run one initially. No more Blank Slate image, harder to get those Blue Collar White votes.

But there's still a lot of room between now and November. But yes, I do expect a Rovian campaign from now till December because the political lines have been pretty well drawn in America over the last 2 decades.

AO

Anonymous said...

testing99: He looked dumb and clueless in the presser at SD. Quayle time. Obama is not very smart.

Yeah - the more I see of Obama straying from the script and trying to improvise*, the more it becomes obvious that he was a quota admission to HLS.

In one sense, it's almost kinda sad - you know the power of large numbers, and you know where the mean is, and what the standard deviation is, yet still you find yourself hoping that somewhere, somehow, some way, there might be one single man who could stand athwart the bell curve and yell "Stop!".

But if people thought Dubya was a moron - then, gee whiz, Obama is in way, way, way over his head.

Which is not to say that he couldn't yet become the 44th PotUSA nevertheless.

*PS: To the extent that many of us [Steve Sailer, Spengler, etc, see e.g. here] have been speculating on the double life which Obama has been leading all this time [my theory is that he is le Carré's Magnus Pym], you've got to figure that that kind of duplicity takes a tremendous toll on any man - trying to keep all the lies straight in his head - and, at this point, Obama may be collapsing from the sheer exhaustion of it all.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed that over the years the percentage of white voters voting republican has steadily risen. Could it be that the democrats' increasing tolerance of anti-white racism is alienating white voters, who, while remaining silent on the issue, are voicing their concerns in the ballot box?

Anonymous said...

Note the water-carrying by the AP photographer and editor; upshots (which convey power and dominance) and controlled lighting.

Anonymous said...

The most amusing aspect of this is that in 2004 - and up until 2007 - Obama was proclaimed by the media as the Democrat who could talk religion as well as any Southern Baptist Republican.

These days though, Obama says he hardly ever went to church. "Jesus, huh? Whose that? Never heard of him. Church is for losers in the Midwest who own guns and have low paying jobs".

Anonymous said...

Well, Obama claims he was surprised by Pfleger’s comments. But he sure shouldn’t have been, as Pfleger has been making such “controversial” statements for some time. And Obama knows Pfleger pretty well, having been endorsed by Pfleger back in 2000. In return for that endorsement, Obama earmarked $225,000 for Pfleger’s church. Here is a report from the Chicago Sun Times, from the NRO Media blog:

In 2000, Rev. Pfleger endorsed Barack Obama in his House race over incumbent Bobby Rush. Here's what Rev. Pfleger said at the time (Chicago Sun-Times, 2/29/2000, purchase required):
More than a dozen South Side ministers said Monday that they won't back U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush's re-election effort because he has not been an aggressive leader for his district. The ministers, including the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Catholic Church, 1210 W. 78th Pl., said they would instead back state Sen. Barack Obama (D-Chicago), citing his grass-roots background in their communities.
Pfleger said that for hard-pressed areas on the South Side "to receive the resources, opportunities and advantages that are afforded other communities and other individuals in this state, it's going to take someone like Barack Obama."
Pfleger has supported Rush for Congress in the past but said that "in the years he has held that seat, I haven't seen the kind of changes we need to see in the 1st Congressional District."

The $225,000 in Obama-grants announced in early 2001 to Pfleger's church isn't change you can believe in. This is change financed by the taxpayers of Illinois.

Anonymous said...

MORE ON PFLEGER’S LONGTIME SUPPORT OF OBAMA, AND OBAMA’S SUPPORT FOR PFLEGER:

FROM THE MAY 2007 CHICAGO TRIBUNE

State pork to Obama's district included allies, donors
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-0705030035may03,0,1762523.story

One of those long-time supporters was Rev. Michael Pfleger, the politically active leader of St. Sabina Church. He gave Obama's campaign $1,500 between 1995 and 2001, including $200 in April 2001, about three months after Obama announced $225,000 in grants to St. Sabina programs.

Pfleger said he made those donations personally, not on behalf of the church or to win grants.

"At a time when less people vote than ever, I don't think pastors should be silent on politics," Pfleger said.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm,

Why aren't you interested in this, Steve:

The first step toward disarming the United States

Truth said...

"I've noticed that over the years the percentage of white voters voting republican has steadily risen. Could it be that the democrats' increasing tolerance of anti-white racism is alienating white voters, who, while remaining silent on the issue, are voicing their concerns in the ballot box?"

Naaaaah, the republicans just make better commercials.

Anonymous said...

I'm becoming more inclined to predict that Obama will be another Mondale: a largely socialist Democrat who ventures out of his liberal enclave and mistakes an adoring media and enthusiastic college students for electoral votes.

OTOH, there's the problem of McCain himself. He's old, and not Reagan old. He's old old. He's a tired, cranky old man up against a handsome, fit 47-year old at the height of his rhetorical skills. McCain's staff will be sweating bullets in the debates, praying he doesn't go full-bore monkey-s**t crazy, peeing all over himself and ordering the 843rd Bomb Wing to attack the Soviets.

Having said all that, I bet white people will vote for John McCain's Re-Animated Corpse if they have to. This Fr. Pfleger crap is just more piling on. In suburban and ex-urban America, white people are looking at each other at their kids' baseball games and saying, this is what gets hold of the nukes for four years?

"See you in Hell first!," they'll cackle, and pull the lever for McCain, Bomb-Iran, in-Iraq-for-centuries and all.

--Senor Doug