Quote of the Day 2

From Jonah Goldberg on Barack Obama, noting that the Democrat should be way ahead of John McCain -- but isn't:

Ask the typical Obama supporter why this should be so and you’ll get a range of answers. Some just stare at the poll numbers the way my late basset hound would look at me when I tried to feed him a grape: with pure unblinking incomprehension. Others act like the guy who sits alone with his shopping bags at the public library, muttering about Fox News conspiracies and how Karl Rove-like aliens are doing terrible things with probes of proctological exactitude. Still others just shake their heads at the racism of anyone who could possibly have a problem with a very left-wing politician with almost no experience, who often sounds like his campaign slogan is: “People of Earth! Stop Your Bickering. I Am From Harvard, And I’m Here To Help.”

I especially liked Goldberg's observation -- via Michael Barone -- that "with the exception of the black vote, Obama’s support within the Democratic party is comprised almost entirely of cultural liberals. [Barone] dubbed this intra-Democratic split a divide between 'academics and Jacksonians.' The Jacksonians are working-class, culturally conservative whites. The academics are the same people who formed the base for Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, George McGovern, and other successful presidents in the anti-matter universe where Spock has a goatee."

Quote of the Day: Jeremiah Wright & the Black Community

Today's quote of the day comes from Jonah Goldberg on NRO's The Corner, talking about issues of race as they pertain to the kerfuffle involving Barack Obama and his pastor:

First, it is complete nonsense that Jeremiah Wright speaks for the entire black community or the black church, whatever that is.

But, second and more important, if that were true then shame on the black church and the black community too. I am so sick of hearing talking heads saying that Wright's sermons are nothing unusual in black churches as if that somehow makes what he says ok. It's as if something disgusting and untrue is outrageous if one person believes it, but it's suddenly respectable if lots of people — or lots of black people — believe it. Hogwash.

(Funny how it's not a defense of evangelical Christians to say of Pat Robertson's blather "that sort of thing is said in white churches every Sunday.")