Race for the White House- 3/22/08

Today's entry will hopefully be short since there is not much to talk about beyond the holding patten that Democrats find themselves in with the next contest not occuring for another month.

Of course, most of the week featured continued discussion on Barack Obama's relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and the speech he gave in Philadelphia on Tuesday on race issues, in which he repudiated statements made by Wright, admitted that he had heard him make controversial statements before, but refused to condemn the minister personally. Instead, Obama sought to link Wright's remarks with those made by Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro and his own white grandmother. Many in the media and on the left felt that Obama's eloquent speech was among the greatest in U.S. history and there were several predictions that with it, the Illinois Senator was able to head off a campaign crisis and would start rebounding in the polls. While the Gallup Democrat primary tracking poll does show Obama has made up some lost ground to Hillary Clinton, other national and state polls show signifcant slippage both to Clinton and to John McCain in a general election contest. Perhaps, it will take another week or so to fully be able to absorb the impact of Obama's speech and if it was a positive or negative for his campaign. In any event, the Obama campaign was eager yesterday to try to change the subject to discussing things such as the unauthorized access of his passport files (which turns out to also have affected the other two candidates) and the endorsement of Obama by New Mexico Governor and former Presidential candidate Bill Richardson.

Republican John McCain spent the week in the Middle East and in Europe, and while the trip was formally related to his service on the Senate Armed Services Committee, there were certainly connections that related to his status as the soon to be Republican nominee, particularly as he went about meeting with foreign leaders on the world stage. There was a bit of a gaffe though in Israel when McCain used the term "Al Qaeda" when he meant to refer to Islamic extremists in general, in relation to their work in Iran. McCain did quickly correct himself when informed of this mistake by Independent Connecticut Senator (and McCain supporter) Joe Lieberman but many Democrats sough to pounce on the mistatement as evidence that McCain was somehow not up to speed on world issues. There is little reason to believe though that the public was overly concerned or perhaps even aware of this incident, and any sort of Beltway or blogospehere brouhaha may have just been more about some people needing to bring up something other than Democrats fighting amongst themselves or being on the defensive.

If recent polls from Rasmussen and Survey USA are any indication, McCain should be feeling quite well as he returns to the United States, with a long campaign still ahead of him, but with his eventual opponent still having someone else to fight tooth and nail in order to eventually advance out of their bracket.