More Wright

Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, has announced he will give what he is billing as a major address on "the larger issue of race in this campaign." The speech will come tomorrow. We will all be watching and listening.

The speech is in response to a week's worth of negative publicity about the senator's ties to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The church's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., has made statements over the years that have been characterized as anti-American. You can read some of them on my previous post, "The Wright Stuff."

Sen. Obama has been a member of the church for 20 years and he and his family are active members. He has tried to distance himself from the more controversial ideas of Rev. Wright but his explanation that he never heard the more outlandish statements because he wasn't present for them or did not know about them strained credulity in the political press.

Hence, the speech.

Another reason might be that since the story of the speeches broke this past week, the Rasmussen Reports polling organization notes: "Sen. Obama has lost 5 points to Sen. Clinton in his daily tracking (52% to 47%) since Thursday, when the Wright comments really exploded into the mainstream."

Additionally, the poll points out that on the Wright controversy, "Most voters, 56%, said Wright's comments made them less likely to vote for Obama. That figure includes 44% of Democrats."

The poll finds the same racial split that we have seen emerging in past primaries. For African-American voters polled, according to Rasmussen, "29% said Wright's comments made them more likely to support Obama. Just 18% said the opposite while 50% said Wright's comments would have no impact...White voters, by a 46% to 33% margin, say that Obama should leave the Church. African-American voters, by a 68% to 16% margin, say he should not. Wright retired last month as Pastor of the Church."

So, Sen. Obama has a pretty hot issue on his hands and his previous statements repudiating any language from Rev. Wright that anyone found offensive while not leaving the church have not worked to assuage voter reaction to the Rev. Wright's comments.

Sen. Clinton has remained silent on the issue (although the two have fired volleys back and forth over the Iraq war).

Tomorrow's speech should be interesting because the senator cannot be seen as abandoning the sentiments of African-American voters who have been supporting him monolithically but he also cannot be seen ignoring an issue that a broad spectrum of voters finds troubling.

We'll see what he says tomorrow.