Article Added On: March 24, 2008 - about 1 month ago
Title: Obama struggles to limit damage in pastor row as white voters slip away
Original URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/22/uselections2008.barackobama
Author: Daniel Nasaw, Ewen MacAskill
Publication: The Guardian
Publication Date: March 22, 2008 - about 1 month ago
Faith Groups: Evangelical Christian, Mainline Protestant
Themes: religion in politics

Abstract: Obama's Tuesday speech has been acknowledged as one of his best--"great damage control" and "a beautiful rebuttal"--but he was not won over.

Listen for a few minutes to Joey Vento, owner of a south Philadelphia institution that serves gut-busting sandwiches through a takeaway hatch, and the scale of Barack Obama's problems become apparent. Obama is having the worst week of his campaign. It is, some believe, a week that threatens his chances of becoming president.

"That minister, that was terrible, all his sayings. He's preaching hatred," Vento said. "The thing I didn't like about Obama; you're telling me for 20 years you been going to that church and you never heard that?"

Vento, 68, was speaking about Obama's former pastor and spiritual adviser, Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons have been aired repeatedly on US television denouncing the US as racist.

The clips have alienated the white voters, such as Vento, that Obama needs in his next contest with Hillary Clinton, to be held in Philadephia and the other towns and cities of Pennsylvania on April 22. But it goes further than that. The danger for Obama is not just that he could lose badly in Pennsylvania but that senior Democrats will wonder whether the loss of white votes could cost him the November general election.

The latest poll in Pennsylvania by Public Policy Polling puts Clinton on 56% and Obama on 30%. The same polling organisation showed her having overtaken Obama in North Carolina, which is also still to hold its primary: she has 43% to his 42%.

Phil Singer, spokesman for Clinton, told reporters: "It's no secret that the Obama campaign is in political hot water."

Obama attempted to defuse the escalating row with a speech on Tuesday in Philadelphia in which he spoke in detail about his relationship with Wright and race in the US. It was widely acknowledged as one of his best. He wrote it on Monday night after his wife, Michelle, and their children had gone to bed. Although acclaimed by the media and political activists, his speech has failed to win over voters such as Vento.

Obama has since redoubled his efforts. Usually reluctant to offer himself up for interview, he began touring media outlets and appeared twice on CNN, first on Wednesday night and then again on Thursday. His campaign team announced yesterday that Obama had received the endorsement of the former Democratic candidate Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico.

But the sight of Wright calling on his congregation to sing God Damn America instead of God Bless America is not one from which Americans are going to be diverted easily. A theme that emerges from the bars and diners of white Philadelphia is suspicion that Obama's failure to disown Wright and his presence in his church for almost two decade suggests that he himself is secretly resentful towards white people. A stray comment during an interview may have helped contribute to that suspicion when he referred to his grandmother, who had voiced her concern about being mugged by a black person, as a "typical white person".

In Chickie's and Pete's restaurant and sports bar in Philadelphia, John Fernandez, a chiropractor, said Obama must have known what Wright was preaching. "How can you be that tight and not know or share some of those opinions? I was leaning toward him a little bit, but that took it over the edge," Fernandez said, hollering to be heard over the din of the bar and televised basketball game. "You got to go to another church, or you share those opinions."

He described Obama's Tuesday speech as "great damage control" and "a beautiful rebuttal", but he was not won over. Fernandez said he wondered whether Obama shared the opinions Wright expressed.

Obama, who announced his candidacy in February last year, managed to get through most of 2007 without race surfacing as an issue. Bill Clinton turned it into a row during the South Carolina primary in January, although the former president claimed this week that the media had been responsible, not him.

African-Americans in Philadelphia have been largely supportive of Obama's handling of the Wright row. George Brooks, a cook in the A1 Soul Food truck, parked on the street in front of the Temple University campus in north Philadelphia, said Wright's comments reflected the thinking of many African-Americans. "That's the way we think, as a people," said Brooks. "It may be a big thing to the white race, but you know, these things happened to us. All these things that he's talking about happened to us."

But what if those remarks make white people uncomfortable? "Just think, we've been uncomfortable all these years," Brooks replied.