Richard Spencer

March 15, 2008

Just as I was spell-checking my post on how the GOP is a bunch of wimps afraid to attack Obama for having little substance and way too much baggage, a barrage of attacks were launched against the senator after video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright doing his thing emerged on cablenews. Obama quickly dispensed with his ?spiritual adviser.” If you haven?t seen Wright in action, a good montage can be found here. 

None of this disproves my thesis, for it?s important that the material was released by the right-leaning media?NewsMax, FOX News etc.?not the McCain campaign nor a 527 group associated with the GOP ? la the Swift-boaters. 

I don?t have much to say about the video; it doesn?t strike me as particularly surprising: the ?God Damn America? being but a rhetorical flourishes on a self-evidently black nationalist program that has long be available at the Trinity United Church of Christ?s website. 

It is worth noting, with satisfaction, that long before NewsMax broke the story of Wright?s presenting Louis Farrakhan with a Lifetime Achievement Award and FOX?s propagating of the Wright videos, the dissident, antiwar Right was well out in front of the pack?beginning with Steve Sailer?s profile of Obama in TAC and much comment on VDARE and this site. And as Evan McLaren noted not too long ago, Rush & Co. have tried to keep their hands off any talk of Obama?s church until very recently.

It?s also worth noting that Scott McConnell?s thesis that Obama would be a sitting duck might for right-wing snipers might soon be proven true. Average Americans, especially Democrat voters, are willing?eager?to vote for a black candidate who gives them the hope of finally ?getting beyond race,? ?turning a new page,? yada-yada-yada. They are, however, rather repulsed by the Al Shartpon?s of the world, and Obama?s new association in their minds with black nationalism and anti-Americanism might prove extremely damaging.

I don?t want to get in the habit of quoting from Jonah Goldberg, but he?s clearly onto something important when he writes:

?[I]t says something fascinating about our political and racial landscape that the Democratic voters with the most experience living in multiracial, multicultural communities are the ones most immune to Obama?s ?beyond race? rhetoric. At the same time, the whitest states are the most gaga for Obama. (He beat Clinton 80 percent to 17 percent in white-supremacist-rich Idaho.) [?]

It?s easy for upscale liberals to talk about the glories of diversity because they live at Olympian heights, above the reality of multicultural America. For Obama?s wealthy, white, liberal supporters, diversity is knowing a rich black lawyer, a wealthy Latino accountant, and lots of well-to-do gay folks.?

If Obama looses that ?beyond race? aura and begins to be associated with a crazy black-nationalist minister, then Americans, even the overeducated, upper-middle-class Obamaniacs, will begin leaving his camp in droves.

Until these past few days, I was convinced that Obama would win the Democrat nomination and the general election. I?m beginning to have second thoughts. It?s still early, but Democrat voters, the DNC, and the Super Delegates might be concluding that Obama has too much baggage to lead them to the Promised Land. Moreover, within the Democratic Party, blacks are quickly being displaced by Latinos as the valued ethnic block. The Democratic leadership?s tolerance for a candidate with ties to an ?Unashamedly Black? preacher are waning.