The Note: Wright's Stuff

April 29, 2008 -- To the iconic scenes that dance in our mind's eye in this campaign -- alongside Hillary Clinton dodging sniper fire and Mitt Romney hunting big game -- we add another classic:

President Barack Obama has just been inaugurated, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is chasing him down, shouting his middle name -- with Louis Farrakhan at his side, for company.

Whether this is the vision foremost in the minds of superdelegates -- or if it's more like one of President John McCain, stealing a victory in what should be a lock of a Democratic year -- are really the only questions that matter at this point in this wild race.

Every passing day seems to give superdelegates new reasons to be nervous about their frontrunner -- and puts more pressure on Obama to show that voters don't (and won't) see Wright's visage and flee.

"Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club," Dana Milbank writes in his Washington Post column.

"It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered -- and added lighter fuel."

Obama's challenge -- with key contests a week away, Pennsylvania's reverberations still being felt, and the good Reverend Wright apparently unable to shut his esteemed trap -- is to show that voters can see Obama as distinct from Wright, no matter how sharply his former pastor's words undercut his campaign message.

"As Obama struggles to close out his party's nomination, his message of hope and reconciliation on race and politics has a competing framework, that of the far less conciliatory rhetoric of Wright," Gannett's Chuck Raasch writes.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign builds on its frame on Tuesday, with a top-of-the-morning endorsement from Gov. Mike Easley, D-N.C., well-timed for a week before the state's critical primary.

"An Easley endorsement would be the first endorsement for Clinton from a major North Carolina political figure," per the Raleigh News & Observer.

"Easley does not have the same sort of political machine that Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania used to help deliver votes for Clinton in that state. But Easley is popular with rural, white, blue-collar Democrats, the sort of voters that Clinton has successfully targeted in wins in Pennsylvania and Ohio."

"Other superdelegates may have been waiting for his cue, said Harrison Hickman, a Democratic pollster who most recently advised former Sen. John Edwards," Mark Johnson reports in the Charlotte Observer.

How does Wright fit into this? "Democratic sources tell ABC News [Wright is] unquestionably worrying superdelegates about Obama's electability," ABC's Jake Tapper reported on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "That's why these next nine contests are so key."

This would be bigger than Easley -- if it happens, and it may not even have to happen to have already happened: Whither John Edwards -- and, of course, his wife? "Mrs. Clinton's supporters, in particular, are anxious for the Edwardses to speak up about whom they support," Julie Bosman reports in The New York Times.

The sentence that will set tongues a-wagging: "Mrs. Edwards, her husband's closest and most trusted adviser, has made it clear that she favors Mrs. Clinton; aides said she had recently tried to persuade Mr. Edwards to do the same," Bosman writes.

And polling helps provide some of the raw materials for that Clinton frame: "Hillary Rodham Clinton now leads John McCain by 9 points in a head-to-head presidential matchup, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that bolsters her argument that she is more electable than Democratic rival Barack Obama," AP's Liz Sidoti writes. "Obama and Republican McCain are running about even."

Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, may be playing a game here, but Camp Clinton will take the quote: "I think he is the weaker [Democratic] candidate," Cole, R-Okla., told reporters Monday.

From Obama's perspective, it's hard to imagine a worse star turn for Wright, who chose not just to go on a publicity blitz, but to add to the considerable YouTube library that may -- along with an astonishing selfishness -- constitute his lasting legacy in politics (assuming Obama doesn't take him up on that offer of serving on the ticket).

"Obama's controversial former pastor was defiant as he spoke to a room packed with non-journalistic supporters, defending himself, dismissing Obama's criticism of him as mere political expedience, and jokingly offering himself as a vice presidential prospect," ABC's Jake Tapper and Nitya Venkataraman report.

They continue: "He clearly was not doing Obama any favors, not only by reappearing before a ravenous media thus distracting from Obama's attempt to relate better to white working class voters in Indiana and North Carolina, but by implying Obama's condemnation of some of his sermons was not sincere."

Obama needs a new storyline. "The Wright story presents potential peril for Obama, increasing the urgency for the campaign to shift the focus," Christi Parsons and Mike Dorning write in the Chicago Tribune.

This is punditry Obama could have managed without: "He didn't distance himself," Wright said of Obama, drawing howls of disapproval from Chicago. (And did he need to let the world know that he was praying privately with the Obamas on the day of his presidential announcement?)

No apologies from Wright -- not for suggesting the US is to blame for 9/11, that the government created AIDS to harm black people, or for his close association with Farrakhan.

Wright was "brimming with defiance and in-your-face bravado," per the New York Daily News' Michael Saul: "For Obama, Wright's leap onto the national stage could hardly come at a worse time, a week before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries."

"At a moment when Barack Obama is struggling to win over white voters worried about the economy, a series of public appearances by his former pastor is threatening to revive a tempest over race, patriotism and religion that the Democratic presidential front-runner hoped he had quashed," Peter Nicholas writes in the Los Angeles Times.

Said David Axelrod, understating the case: "I think candor requires me to say it's not ideal."

This at least seems more credible than ever: "He does not speak for me," Obama told reporters Monday in North Carolina, per ABC's Sunlen Miller. "I think certainly what the last three days indicate is that we're not coordinating with him."

Who believes in coincidences? The New York Daily News' Errol Louis points out that Monday's National Press Club event was organized by Barbara Reynolds, an ordained minister and former USA Today editorial board member.