The Rank And File Don't Buy It

After Barack Obama's "ground breaking speech" yesterday I listened to the new casts, and you'd have thought he single handedly defeated racism in America, and made his pastor a thing of the past.

Then around a couple of different water coolers today; both physical and electronic; I found that the rank and file white guys, the folks this was supposed to help with, aren't buying it. While many think that he expressed some great ideas, and spoke a lot of truth on race relations, and where they need to go, they thought that the meat of the speech, dealing with Rev. Jeremiah Wright came up lacking.

There are two reasons, apparently. The first is many think that Obama should have denounced the Pastor, not just "the words". They wanted Obama to take the route the Clinton campaign was forced to take with Geraldine Ferraro for expressing her opinion. Obama instead gave the pastor a big forgiving hug, for expressing his. Considering Ferraro was obviously seeing America through the same "static" lens of his Pastor, some thought he should have forgiven her in his speech.

Secondly, many folks saw this as a politician covering his tail. Just days before he'd been on the news programs telling us how he'd never heard any of the inflammatory rhetoric. Yet yesterday, he confessed to being in the pews for some of the speeches, and disagreeing with them.
(I personally think Fox News caused that, by claiming to have "hours" of Reverend Wright's sermons on tape, and that Obama couldn't possibly claim to have been absent from every one.)

But that second reason brings up the question, is he a liar? Which is true, what he said on the talk shows last weekend, or yesterday's speech? If yesterday is the truth, then why; as he claimed he would have on the talk shows; didn't he confront the Reverend?

Obama wanted to make Reverend Wright go away with yesterday's speech. But from what I've listened to today, in person, on the radio, and read in blogs, he didn't accomplish that. Instead, he may have opened a whole new can of worms. He may find that he'll have to defend himself against the questions raised above.