Not For Very Much Longer

Obama knows he has to watch what he says about the Reverend Wright. He still has to deal with people like John Nichols in The Nation:

As Wright has illustrated over the past several days, in a remarkable appearance Friday on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal and in speeches to the Detroit NAACP and the National Press Club in Washington, he is the opposite of the caricature of an angry, America-hating false prophet that has been so crudely attached to him. Deeply grounded in biblical tradition, nuanced in his understanding of race relations and historically experienced in his assessments of America's strengths and weaknesses, he has much to say to this country at this time.

Or Ruth Conniff in The Progressive.

Wright is a scholar, and he brings layers of meaning and a nuanced understanding to the great themes he addresses. But that is quickly lost in a cable news report.

As long as a significant portion of his base actually agree with angry, America-hating false prophets like Wright, Obama has to worry about them. Luckily, it's too late for anyone to get to the left of him, and once the general election comes around, they'll have nowhere to go.

PS My favorite part of Conniff's piece is this:

To be sure, Wright's refusal to denounce Louis Farrakhan, his angry-sounding declaration that Farrakhan didn't put him in chains or "make me this color," his assertion that "yes, I believe our country is capable of doing anything" in answer to a question about whether he thinks the United States deliberately infected black people with AIDS will be held against him. But the audience of his friends and supporters ate up his strikes back against what has surely been a racist and unfair campaign against him.

She can't even condemn him at his most outrageous--she can only note others won't like what he's saying--but has no trouble calling his critics racist and unfair.