The American Spectator

Jeremiah Wright’s sermons rightly rouse suspicion, if not hostility, in the very group of Democrats Obama must win first — the superdelegates to the Democratic national convention.

The mechanism has always been in place to deny Obama the nomination after a close finish in the primaries and the caucuses. Now there’s a reason to do it.

Dark whispers warn of riots like 1968 in Chicago if such a pass comes to be. But, if it does — here’s Obama, stuck again — it simply proves what he’s trying so desperately to get away from: That a lot of African-Americans apparently believe a whole lot of pernicious nonsense. The worry is that Obama does, too.

IT’S GOING TO take all of Barack Obama’s fancy footwork — and fast — to avoid defeat. Not in November, but in August. His speech Tuesday was a pip. Charles Murray wrote that he found it “just plain flat out brilliant — rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we’re used to from our pols.”

It comes back, however, to a very small group of voters, those superdelegates. And to what the elite media does in the next four months. This morning, for example, NPR’s hourly newscast did not mention — did not mention! — that Obama would be making a major speech on race, and on Wright’s statements.

Let’s see if the stonewall works. Among political insiders, I’m betting it will not.