In the aftermath of Barack Obama's speech about race, Clinton supporter Lanny Davis wrote a short essay about the speech. After generously praising Obama for the "brilliance" of the speech, and reaffirming his great respect for Obama, Davis went on to pose several questions which he felt, even after the speech, still clouded the Obama candidacy. One of Davis' questions was the following:

If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the "N" word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

The question posed by Davis is an interesting one, but not for the reasons that he assumes. Transposing Jeremiah Wright's race to white in order to assess the objectionableness of his words, is in fact not a legitimate form of analysis. In situations where a black person's behavior is in question, it is typical for whites to pose the ultimate gotcha question, "what if a white person had done that!?" Let me explain why that analysis has little value:

Let's do a thought experiment: Suppose a white college student goes to his state university and tells the dean that he would like to start a "White Student Union," a club devoted to the cultural affairs of white students. The dean tells the enterprising student, "No, such a club would not be acceptable." Not to be deterred, the student writes a letter to the student newspaper, denouncing the dean's refusal, and states that he is a victim of discrimination. After all, the outraged student argues, "there's been a Black Student Union at this school for 20 years, and nobody has complained about that! I'm the victim here."

In lodging this complaint, the student has fallen prey to the widely held fallacy of racial symmetry. This view, held by many, but rarely examined, holds that all behaviors by whites and blacks are morally equivalent and should be judged through the same prism. Unfortunately, often this view often makes no sense.

The answer to our aggrieved student is, of course there's a Black Student Union! At our hypothetical State U., 90% of the facilities, resources and organizations cater--quite understandably--to the dominant white culture of the campus. When the African-American students set up their club, it was not a racist initiative; rather it was a support group that recognized that these students were a severe minority on campus, and benefited from bonding together to maximize their shared culture and experience.

By contrast, the proposed "White Student Union" would be a redundancy. Who needs a club specially devoted to white students' needs? That's what the school was set up for in the first place!

Just so that my point is crystal clear, let's look at a second example. Suppose a white businessman, a creative and enterprising fellow, decides to start a new cable channel. In seeking capital for his venture, he sends out hundreds of letters, telling prospective investors that his channel will be called, "White Entertainment Television." When the responses come back, universally telling him, "uh, no thanks, all my funds are already committed right now," our businessman is surprised. "Geez," the discouraged businessman wonders, "how could Robert Johnson do so well in setting up Black Entertainment Television, and I can't raise a nickel for my white channel?" The reason is simple, the two businesses have no equivalence either as business ventures, or as moral activities. When Robert Johnson founded BET in 1979, blacks were a grossly under-served population in the entertainment industry. By contrast, a new network devoted to whites, would almost certainly be an exercise in in-your-face bigotry, and would serve no marketplace niche. So once again, these two behaviors, by people of two races, are superficially similar, but are completely asymmetrical in terms of their moral significance.

In other words, given the vastly different histories of blacks and whites, simply switching the race of the actor for purposes of analysis can be perilous and even foolhardy, because one cannot presume a moral symmetry between the two sets of actions. Let's now go back to the example posed by Lanny Davis:

The first part of Davis' question--what if a white minister used the N word--makes no sense whatsoever. Reverend Wright wasn't using the N word as a term of abuse. Rather, he was pointing out in his sermon that unlike Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has never been called the N word. Now one can argue whether or not that fact necessarily gives Barack Obama any deeper understanding of race relations. That's a separate issue. But the use of the N word by Wright is quite distinct from that of a white minister using it in an abusive context. The comparison is absurd on its face.

The second part of Davis' question, "if a white minister....used rhetoric and words similar to the KKK," also seems to be a bit confused. While I myself found Wright's words to be needlessly inflammatory, he wasn't talking in the manner of a KKK member. Rather, he was likening the U.S. government to the KKK. While one might conclude that both forms of rhetoric are objectionable, they are hardly the same: If a white minister uses the language of the KKK, he is typically preaching hatred and violence toward America's minorities; what Reverend Wright was doing, by contrast, was scolding the U.S. government for not adequately protecting America's minorities. Again, when scrutinized closely, Davis' question is comparing apples and oranges.

Let me make it clear that I am no fan of Jeremiah Wright's sermons. Beyond the hyperbolic content, the belligerent tone alone would put me off. That said, it is still necessary to understand that the level of anger in Trinity United Church of Christ and in many other black churches has to be understood in terms of the historical context of the congregants, whose economic status, level of health care, and school systems would be seen as catastrophic if they were characteristic of the white community. One of the things I like about Barack Obama is that unlike Lanny Davis, he understands this fact. Here is Obama, talking about his church and minister:

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

Here's Obama on Reverend Wright:

He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

In answer to Lanny Davis, there is no comparable white minister out there to whom we can compare Jeremiah Wright. Please rethink your analysis.

The emergence of tapes of Barack Obama's minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, delivering sermons which harshly condemn the United States, and suggest that 9/11 reflected "the chickens coming home to roost," have created the biggest crisis of Obama's political career. Had the tapes comes to light earlier in the campaign, they might have derailed Obama's candidacy. Even at this late date in the campaign season they have put his campaign squarely on the defensive, and play into deepseated fears in the white community that a black president cannot adequately represent all the American people. They also feed the urban myth, spewed over the internet, that somehow Obama lacks patriotism, and that if in office, he would pursue a black, retributive agenda rather than one that seeks the common good. Such questions have been part of a whispering campaign against Obama since the beginning of the primary season, and are now being asked loudly by his critics.

An interview done on "60 Minutes" by Steve Kroft with citizens from southern Ohio, illustrates perfectly the unease that a segment of white America has had with the Obama candidacy long before they ever heard of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Here is Kroft, prior to the Ohio primary, asking one blue-collar worker who he planned to vote for:

Man: I'm leaning toward Obama. [but] there's a couple issues with him I'm not too clear on.

Kroft: Which issues?

Man: Well I'm hearing that he doesn't even know the National Anthem. He wouldn't use the Holy Bible. He's got his own beliefs, the Muslim beliefs. A couple issues that bothers me at heart...

When Kroft informed him that none of those things were true, the man seemed genuinely startled. While I would doubt that the interviewee actually voted for Obama anyway, the release of the Wright tapes will have almost certainly fueled his fears, as well as causing many serious individuals to ask how Obama could have associated himself with Pastor Wright for so long. A cottage industry has developed to explain this issue. Didn't Obama know that Pastor Wright's views were a ticking time bomb? Doesn't their relationship cast doubt upon Obama's judgment after all?

The worst analysis I've heard of the Obama/Wright relationship was the one put forth by William Kristol and Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday. Here is Kristol:

....he just joined the largest church in the area for political reasons, for opportunistic reasons....

Here is Juan Williams:

.... he joined the church to solidify his credentials as authentically black, because it is the largest church in South Chicago....he exploited it up to a point....it speaks to his character and his judgment.

These bits of analysis are well off the mark, for several reasons. First, Obama began going to Trinity United Church of Christ in 1987, before he had even gone to law school. At that time, Obama was hardly--as Kristol and Williams suggest--a politician on the make, but rather a young man searching to find himself and his place in the world. At the time, he was working as a community organizer, was dealing with many pastors in the Chicago area, and was preparing to leave Chicago for Harvard Law School. For Obama, Trinity was not a source of racial polarization as many now see it; rather it was a unifying presence in the community, a place where the black middle class sat next to laborers, where those who ran the school system sat next to those who struggled within it, where black intellectuals worshiped along with those who were still mastering their reading skills.

It was during one of Obama's first visits to the church when he heard Wright sermonize about a painting by British Victorian artist George Frederic Watts, called "Hope." The painting shows a bruised and battered woman sitting atop the globe with a harp that has lost all but one string. The world below her is in disrepair, and she has fared no better. After describing the many hardships that beset the many members of his congregation, Wright intoned:

And yet consider again the painting before us....a few faint notes floating upward to the heavens...She dares to hope.... She has the audacity....to make music...and praise God...on the one string... she has left.

Obama writes in his book "Dreams from My Father" about this moment:

As the choir lifted back up into song, as the congregation began to applaud those who were walking up to the altar to accept Reverend Wright's call, I felt a light touch on the top of my hand. I looked down to see the older of two boys sitting beside me, his face slightly apprehensive as he handed me a pocket tissue. Beside him his mother glanced at me with a faint smile before turning back to the altar. It was only as I thanked the boy that I felt the tears running down my cheeks.

This, not the crass political calculation proffered by Kristol and Williams, is the essence of Obama's bond with the Trinity United Church of Christ. For Obama, it is the fact that Trinity backs up its rhetoric with action. It provides care for the elderly, offers hospice care, money for college bound students, charity for historically black colleges (many of which have fallen on hard times), is an important source of anti-drug work in the community, and serves as a support and resource center for ex-prisoners trying to make their way back into society. That is what drew the then skeptical Obama to this place of worship. And it was this church that helped Obama find his identity as a black man in society. Wright became a mentor and a father figure for Obama, who had never really known his own father. And I suspect that if we knew the Wright that Obama knew, removed from the pulpit, rather than the caricature drawn from YouTube videos, he would emerge as a far more compelling individual than the ranting figure in the tapes.

My point is a simple one, that understanding the work of a church and a minister through a handful of YouTube excerpts hardly does justice to the entirety of the work of that church. Just as a Catholic can attend services and derive great spiritual uplift, while still leaving behind the messages of homophobia, sexism, and archaic views on sexuality, so I believe that Obama got the same kind of uplift from Wright, while forgoing the over the top rhetoric and appeals to race. It may be that Obama, like his Republican counterpart Mitt Romney, will feel obligated to give a broad address, explaining his almost familial closeness to Reverend Wright, explaining the overwhelmingly positive work of his church, while also explaining the ways in which Obama's and Wright's political views differ. If he does, he might want to start with one of the eloquent passages from his book "Dreams of My Father":

And if a part if me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams.

"The audacity of hope!" I still remember my grandmother, singing in the house, "There's a bright side somewhere...don't rest till you find it."

1) Pennsylvania. As the democratic primary in Pennsylvania gears up, the latest electoral news has to buoy the Obama campaign: Not only did Obama win Mississippi by a 61-37% spread in popular vote, not only did he claim 17 delegates in Mississippi to Clinton's 11, but we now learn that Obama actually won the delegate race in Texas. According to CNN, when you combine delegates won in both the Texas primary and its accompanying caucuses, the latest estimate shows Obama with 99 delegates to Clinton's 94. As a result, between the states of Texas, Wyoming, and Mississippi, Obama has padded his delegate lead over Hillary Clinton by 13, and now leads by around 130 delegates (pledged and Super combined). This obviously puts extra pressure on Hillary to "run up the score" in Pennsylvania. The question is, is Hillary capable of a big win in Pennsylvania. In fact, is she capable of winning it at all?

While the demographics look favorable for Hillary--a larger number of blue-collar whites than the national average, a lower number of African-Americans than the national average, and a larger number of voters over 65 than the national average--discussions of the this primary typically omit one important wild card: Barack Obama has six full weeks to introduce himself to the Pennsylvania voters. In other words, this campaign may resemble the build-up to Iowa or New Hampshire more than it does that of Ohio or Texas. Obama will be able to hold his trademark rallies, but with a full six weeks, he will also have the time and space to do retail campaigning at business sites, at town meetings, and at people's homes. It is well established now that Hillary begins every state with a 10 to 20% lead in the polls; Pennsylvania is no different. But given the luxury of six weeks of campaigning, this could become a neck and neck struggle if Obama is bold enough to do the following:

a) First, he should completely rewrite his stump speech. Obama's stump speech, which served him so well in the early stages of the campaign, is now as stale as week-old toast. He needs to incorporate new ideas into his speech, ideas both big and small. The speech needs to be tailored to the specific economic needs of Pennsylvania, while still containing broad, visionary themes. In Pennsylvania, Obama should downplay slightly "the politics of hope," by this time a somewhat tired phrase. Instead, he should run aggressively against the politics of cynicism. Hillary Clinton made a colossal blunder in Mississippi by touting Obama as a "dream" running mate, because it completely undercut her dismissive "he's not ready" message, showing it to be just another Machiavellian tactic. Were I Obama, I would beat this like a drum in Pennsylvania:

Can anybody believe Hillary any more when she talks about "experience?" When she needs votes in Texas, she brings out the red phone; when she wants to siphon off my supporters in Mississippi, I suddenly become the "dream" vice president. It doesn't get much more cynical than that. If anyone ever needed a definition of the old politics, that is it!

Not a day would go by when I wouldn't mock her "dream team" statements.

b) In talking to workers, Obama should show something that we almost never see from him, anger, outrage, indignation. Being preternaturally "cool" plays well in academe, and it's fine in jazz circles, but if you're touring The Hershey Company, or Heinz, or Allegheny Industries, you had better show that there's some blood in your veins.

2) Geraldine Ferraro. Ferraro's bizarre comments to the effect that Obama would not be where he is were it not for his race, tells us a lot not only about Ferraro, but about the country as a whole. Her comment is simply a cruder, uglier version of the position that numerous women have taken recently in interviews: They have come to believe that in politics, there is more discrimination against women, than against a black man. Normally I steer clear of foolish "my group is more discriminated against than your group" arguments, but the position taken by Hillary supporters is so flawed that it needs to be addressed. In the entire history of the U.S. there have only been four black governors. Since Reconstruction there have only been three black Senators. These facts hardly suggest a great receptivity to African-Americans in high office.

The notion of there being overwhelming resistance to a female president is actually a gross misreading of Obama's stellar political rise: He has been such a compelling candidate, his message and character have been so successful in drawing support, that bedazzled political observers have lost sight of just how singular and extraordinary Obama's accomplishment is. One year ago, the prospect that an African-American would be poised to win the Democratic nomination was all but unthinkable. It now stands as a profound irony that Obama has been so successful that all the Geraldine Ferraros of the world have jumped to the foolish conclusion that anyone could do it, or even more preposterous, that Obama's race actually helped him secure the nomination. The truth is, Barack Obama is the only African-American in the country who could have accomplished what he has done. He has outlasted a very deep and talented group of Democratic candidates, and he has done it in the midst of a scurrilous, guerilla email campaign that variously casts him as a Muslim, an Al Qaeda plant, and a foreign agent bent on destroying the U.S. By contrast, Hillary began the campaign as the candidate of inevitability, and at the outset of virtually every state primary she has had large, comfortable leads. The fact that Obama has won twice as many states as Clinton has nothing to do with any resistance to a female candidate; rather, it is because she has run at best a mediocre campaign, marked by shortsighted thinking, financial mismanagement, and organizational chaos.

When Ferraro's comments blew up in her face, Ferraro first accused those who criticized her as being "reverse racists." When that didn't work, she tried to backpedal slightly:

I said in large measure, because he is black.... let me also say in 1984 -- and if I have said it once, I have said it 20, 60, 100 times -- in 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been the nominee for vice president.

Even when she tries to show some humility, Ferraro gets it wrong: Yes, her gender was one reason that Mondale picked her as his vice-presidential nominee. The operative word is picked. Ferraro didn't have to campaign for a spot on the ticket, Mondale simply picked her. By contrast, Obama has participated perhaps in the longest, most grueling primary season in history. His campaign has been a model of both grass-roots organization and of inspiration. Every vote that Obama has gotten has been well earned.

Finally, let's take a look at the respective responses of Clinton and Obama to Ferraro's statements. You be the judge. Here's Clinton

It’s regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.

Here's Obama:

I just think that if somebody in my campaign suggested that Senator Clinton was only where she was because she's a woman, people would take great offense and rightly so, because she a very accomplished person, who is running a terrific and tenacious race.....

If anyone has any doubt about which candidate has the most grace and humanity, all one has to do is read these initial responses to Ferraro's rancid remarks. For Hillary, as usual, it's all about politics; the subtext of her comment is "his campaign does it too." For Obama, it's about principle; rather than taking the opportunity to attack Hillary, he goes out of his way to pay her a great compliment in the midst of this fiasco. Enough said.....

After having beaten Hillary Clinton in twelve consecutive contests, Barack Obama's losses in Ohio and Texas have halted his momentum, and have dealt a blow to his own aura of inevitability. As many observers have noted, last night's losses pushed the "re-set" button on the presidential race. Both campaigns must now start rethinking their endgame. This is especially true for Barack Obama.

On January 21, on the eve of the South Carolina debate, I urged Obama to respond forcefully to the Clinton campaign's charges that he had flip-flopped on the Iraq war, and that he had supported the views of Ronald Reagan. No presidential contender, I warned, could let such charges stand without losing the respect of the voters. To his great credit, Obama was thinking along the same lines that night, and confronted Hillary fiercely in that South Carolina debate. While pundits expressed horror at the contentiousness of the debate, I still maintain that the spat was transformational for the Obama campaign. The electorate at large, and Obama's African-American base in particular, needed to see that Obama could be a fighter.

Such confrontation however, does not come naturally to Obama. To be sure, his charm, warmth, and equanimity have put him in good stead in the presidential race. His personality has been essential in reassuring a predominantly white electorate that is always skittish about the prospect of an "angry black man." Obama has shown that he is capable of being a president for all the people.

The problem is, there is a flip side to Obama's vaunted cool and ease: He is somewhat conflict-averse. The same attributes that make him successful in one situation, can become a hindrance, crutch, a cop-out in other situations. There are times when Obama needs to confront, engage, and even attack, when he merely takes refuge in placidity. In the latter stages of the battle for Texas and Ohio, Obama was not only out hustled by Hillary Clinton, more importantly, he was out toughed by her. In the final days, he stood by and caught charge after charge, without adequate response.

Obama has relied so heavily on his charm and unflappability, that he has come to rely excessively on these qualities. When your opponent says, "With respect to answering the red phone at 3 in the morning, I have experience, Senator McCain has experience, and Senator Obama has a speech that he gave," you need to respond clearly and forcefully. Obama did not. Obama's disappointing showing in Ohio and Texas in part stemmed from Hillary's ability to cast herself effectively in the role of "Commander in Chief," while Obama was put in the role of the naive boy scout. Let me be blunt about it: By adopting a soft prevent defense in the face of withering criticisms from Hillary, by refusing to play any offense, by not punching back effectively, Obama has been placed in the position of--dare I say it?--a sissy. That is no way to win the support of a trucker in Akron, or a bricklayer in Sandusky.

And while Obama, perhaps armed with a false sense of security, had settled into a passive role, Hillary, with her back against the wall, has had both guns blazing. The amazing, even shocking support given Hillary by "Saturday Night Live" cannot be underestimated. Hosting the show, SNL alumna Tina Fey, did Hillary a world of good, by bringing to the surface Hillary's dirty little secret-- the fact that people view her as unacceptable because she's perceived as a bitch. Said Fey:

Maybe what bothers me the most, is that people say that Hillary's a bitch. Let me say something about that: She is. So am I. And so is this one [pointing at Amy Poehler]. You know what? Bitches get stuff done!

When Fey uttered those words, I imagined millions of women around the country--all of whom have felt the sting of being put down as "too pushy"-- jumping to their feet and cheering. The SNL skits were a major boon for Hillary, for three reasons: First, they gave a patina of "hipness" to Hillary, not often thought of as young or hip; second, they lampooned Obama as a goofy, grinning pet of the media; third, they made a virtue of something that was formerly taboo, being in touch with your "inner bitch." Clinton benefited from each.

So what should Obama do? Simply put, he should tap into his own wellspring of anger and indignation. When you are trying to establish a new, affirmative, principled politics, there are two ways that you can go about it: 1) You can simply refrain from attacking your opponent, a tack which is ultimately foolish and self-defeating. 2) Or you can hit back at an unprincipled opponent, as long as your criticisms are sincere, accurate and conscientious. For example, I heard Obama on CNN this morning answering a question about "the red phone at three in the morning." Obama responded that if it were a matter of one's resume rather than one's judgment, "then John McCain should be answering the phone." This is at best a weak reply. What he should have said is this:

Hillary still doesn't get it. If all we're doing is looking at resumes, why don't we nominate Dick Cheney? He's got more experience handling crises than anyone. Or how about Don Rumsfeld? Who has more experience than him? Her ad completely misunderstands what it takes to be president. Besides, even using her own criteria, Hillary fails the test. She has no such foreign policy experience, short of serving tea to foreign potentates!

One of Clinton's standard campaign gambits is to refuse to say whether she thinks Obama is qualified to lead the nation, implying that she secretly thinks he isn't, but is too nice and diplomatic to say so. Such statements should elicit sharp, consistent attacks from Obama:

Nobody with any intelligence and competence who serves with me in the Senate has the slightest doubt about my capabilities as a president: Chris Dodd, 27 years in the Senate, Ted Kennedy 46 years in the Senate, Jay Rockefeller, 24 years in the Senate, have all worked extensively with both Hillary and me. And you know what? They've each endorsed me. The message here is obvious: The odd person out here is Hillary; the fact that she can't acknowledge my qualifications is a tired campaign ploy, and tells you a lot more about her, than it does about me.

The tactical principle is very simple: Every time that Clinton practices the old politics of character assassination, Obama should make her pay a price. He should call her on it relentlessly. Take, for example, this gem from Hillary: "Barack Obama thinks that only your children should have health insurance."

Obama should hit back in this manner:

Beware of politicians who will say anything to get elected. Hillary knows full well that my health insurance plan is portable, cost-controlled, and available to any American who wants it. This is yet another distortion, another example of the old politics.

Or how about the consistent claim that Hillary makes, that she "won" Michigan and Florida?

You know, it takes a special kind of gumption to sign a pledge that the Michigan primary wouldn't count, watch your opponents all withdraw their names from the ballot, and then claim victory for yourself. The claim is no less ridiculous and unprincipled now than it was a month ago. As for Florida, in any state in where there is no campaigning, Hillary would win by virtue of simple name recognition. Had there been no campaigning in Virginia and Maryland, she would have won those states too. After we did campaign, Hillary lost them both big time. Given that, those Florida results mean nothing.

The controlling idea behind Obama's endgame should be that of unmasking Hillary's misrepresentations. A candidate who doesn't play straight with the electorate creates numerous vulnerabilities for herself, numerous points of attack. Obama's responsbility to his own campaign is to highlight those vulnerabilities. Hillary has found her "inner bitch." Obama needs to find his own.