Rev Wright - opportunist or saboteur?

By Libby

As Rev. Wright continues on his single handed quest to roil the masses, I've been wondering about his motives. I pretty much write it off to opportunism. He's got he spotlight and he's capitalizing on it. Surely all this press, good or bad, is good for him even though it's clearly been troublesome for Obama. Today, Errol Louis ponders on whether there's a sinister motive in the untoward amount of attention being given a small potatoes preacher who was virtually unknown before the gotcha media decided to make him an issue.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted.

Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds. A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister). It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.

I'm posting on this because in cruising the blogs in the last couple of days, I've seen some speculation in comment sections that the Clinton campaign was somehow behind this. While I don't believe that the campaign itself would stoop so low, I have certainly witnessed some incomprehensibly unfair tactics from avid Clinton supporters seeking to "save us" from nominating Obama. More than one has told me personally, they will do "what it takes' to take him down.

In any event, even assuming this was just an innocent invitation, I think the longer Wright is kept in the spotlight, there's a real danger that this suspicion will grow and I don't think that's good for Clinton or Democrats in general. Clinton supporters may want to consider that before they spend any more time promoting the false media narrative that such peripheral associations have any relevancy and Clinton should be more strenuously defending Obama on those grounds herself.

Comments

[Ron Beasley]

Libby
This sounds exactly like something the Clinton supporters and her campaign would do. They have been using the Karl Rove playbook for months.

[littlehorn]

Wait a minute. Are you telling me that Wright spoke to someone who roots for Clinton ??? My God, this is too weird to pass up !

How about you guys actually defend Wright, who's the modern day MLK ?

Also, he did say he supported Obama.

[Tom M]

The Rev. was always going to be a problem but given a national stage,he's too much his own man to be doing the Clinton's bidding. He's acting just as one would expect him to act, Obama's just another congregant.

[Libby]

Sorry folks. I've been working today and have been offline. I don't know what to make of Wright. I have been defending him up until now, but he seems hellbent on creating controversy to further his own profile and no one could say this is helping Obama. I have empathy for the man and his cause but I think he's going about presenting his case in a destructive manner at this point.

I haven't noticed Clinton pounding this issue all that much lately, but some of her more enthusiastic supporters, particularly bloggers, have been pushing it as some kind of horrible association along with every other silly meme like the alleged finger flip.

It's the framing that bothers me more than the particulars. By accepting and alleging that such peripheral associations are material, they're setting up all Democrats to be tarred with the same strategy. I no longer care about the presidential nomination but I do worry about how building public acceptance for the frame could hurt downticket races that we need to win if we're even going to begin to change the dynamic inside the Beltway.

As for this particular incident, I don't think there's necessarily a nefarious motive behind it. The woman organized an event and got a speaker that would draw people to make it a success. I doubt she knew what he was going to say ahead of time. As I said, I only brought it up because it came on the heels of comments at a few different blogs in the last couple of days, and I mean the commenters, not the bloggers, that are floating the same sabotage theory.

That suggests to me that it's a growing sentiment out there and so I issued another one of futile warnings about playing fair.