WASHINGTON (AFP) – Democrat Barack Obama suffered in the polls Thursday after a much-acclaimed speech on race that, pundits said, had failed to defuse voters’ anger over rage-filled sermons by his former pastor.
Waging an acrimonious battle against Hillary Clinton for the Democrats’ White House nomination, Obama confessed to being bruised by the controversy surrounding his longtime Chicago preacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
“In some ways this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that, you know, the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates,” the Illinois senator told CNN in an interview that aired late Wednesday.
“As a practical matter, in terms of how this plays out demographically, I can’t tell you. And the speech I gave yesterday (Tuesday) obviously was not crafted to hit a particular demographic,” he said.
Obama, the first African-American with a viable shot at the presidency, used his landmark address on race and politics to try to blunt the Wright controversy but also to elevate the debate to a higher plane.
On endless television replays of his sermons, Wright has been shown assailing US and Israeli “terrorism,” calling on blacks to sing “God damn America,” and alleging that AIDS in Africa was spread by the US government.
Many conservative commentators have fastened on Obama’s refusal to disown Wright….
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