Barack's Jeremiad?

[Note: This piece was written on July 9th, 2008. It was not posted, due to technical difficulties. But its main point is still valid and therefore worth expressing.]



It's just about over now. In what will be an earth-shattering precedent, African-American Senator Barack Obama of Illinois will become the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.



But only a couple of weeks ago, a seemingly huge obstacle threatened to block his path. Inevitably, racism exploded into the endurance contest that is the Democrats' Primary Election.

Obviously, Sen. Obama must have anticipated an onslaught from the fomenters of this country's greatest social problem at some point in his quest for the nomination, perhaps to begin if and when he actually secured it. Turns out he didn't have to wait that long.



The source was a schocker, at least to outsiders. The Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Sen. Obama's former minister, injected himself into the campaign through a series of statements that rattled a somnolent press corps and jarred a citizenry enervated by what has been a stupifyingly shallow and seemingly endless political exercise.



Punditry slithered all over Wright's remarks, very likely to the glee of racists across the land. Obama, apparently astounded by the incorrectness of it all, distanced himself from the clergyman who had been his pastor and mentor for twenty years.



Rev. Wright impressed as a scholarly, articulate, and aggrieved Aftrican-American. His laments over the 400-year history of slavery and segregation of black people in this country are irrefutable. His recitation of everyday injustices to blacks is an inconvenient truth, to coin a phrase. Yet the right wing lambasted and Obama abandoned. The messenger got zinged, but not contradicted.



But wait. What if Rev. Wright's broadsides were not aimed at the public at large? What if his shots were directed over the heads of the scriveners to land on his actual target, the African-American voters? While Rev. Wright broke no new ground, his messages underlined to African- Americans the crucial need for them to stand firm with Sen. Obama. First class citizenship beckons at long last and they must not falter. They must remain Obama's solid and unassailable core constituency. By all reckoning, the message was received.



The results last Tuesday in North Carolina and Indiana have moved Sen. Obama very close to victory. Sen. Clinton's only chance lies with the Michigan and Florida delegations. Seating them intact at the Democratic convention will further her claim of strength in the most populous states, which Super Delegates could find to be persuasive. Going on to a floor fight in Denver and winning it, a very long shot, is the New York senator's best and only hope.



So it looks at this point to be Obama in '08 for the Democrats, and with the nomination will come the most vituperative, the most racially charged campaign ever. Swiftboating was a pleasure cruise compared to what Sen. Obama will face. The viciously amoral spirit of the late Lee Atwater still guides Republican conservatives. After eight years of Bush-Cheney, they have next to no chance of winning, but that doesn't mean they will simply roll over. At the least, they will try mightily to maintain the division of this country by race and class. Overt and covert racism will be their basic strategy.



Rev. Wright's pronouncements constituted no jeremiad, no burden for Sen. Obama and his followers, black and white. Instead, the reiterated the historically high stakes in play and fore-warned the Obama camp of the sea of mud soon to be unleashed upon them.



Rev Cox