The Dish

Loyal – for now.

Jeremiah Wright is now the moral equivalent of David Duke? The latest Clintonite ratchets up the Wright issue still further. However dim a view you take of some of Wright’s rhetorical excesses, and I’m not defending them, to compare a man whose church has such a long history of social work, black self-help, outreach to people with HIV, and inclusion of gay people to a rank neo-Nazi is another step too far. Comparing the first potential black president’s pastor to a man who represents some of the worst racism in America is also bound to impact African-Americans. If the Clintons keep this up, they will not only destroy Obama’s chances in the fall, they may also make it very hard for black Democrats to vote for a Clinton again. Josh comments here. I think Clinton has decided to use race in the way that Republicans have for the past couple of decades, to play on white resentment of what are regarded as double-standards on race and to fuse the integrative, dignified campaign of Obama in the minds of some white ethnic Americans with demagoguic soundbites from Wright.

The goal is to win a huge margin in Pennsylvania and to use that as an appeal to the super-delegates that Obama cannot be elected in key swing states with white working class voters. If that won’t work, Clinton will have done all she can to ensure Obama’s defeat by McCain in the fall, which she will then use as vindication for another run in 2012.

It’s called destroying the party (and wounding the country racially)  in order to save the Clintons. It doesn’t surprise me, but I can’t help but feel it is going to enrage many Democrats, especially those who felt that this time, a candidate they loved had a chance to bring the country together. Not if the Clintons can help it.

It is very hard to know what to make right now of the clashes in Basra and Baghdad between US and Maliki government forces and various Shiite militias. It is not hard to figure out that this is an extremely significant development:

Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of the Mahdi Army’s power, was sealed off by a cordon of Iraqi troops and what appeared to be several American units. A New York Times photographer who was able to get through the cordon found more layers of checkpoints, each one run by about two dozen heavily armed Mahdi Army fighters clad in tracksuits and T-shirts. Tires burned in the city center, gunfire echoed against shuttered stores, and teams of fighters in pickup trucks moved about brandishing machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The great question these past few months has been how long the Shiite calm would last. I guess we’re beginning to find out.

Scott Horton:

If one single act marked the rise of the educated elites against Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf, then it was the defiance of his rule that came from senior judges and the bar. It is not surprising then, that one of the first acts of the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, a protégé of the late Benazir Bhutto, was to direct the release of the judges held under house arrest…The new government’s focus is now expected swiftly to turn against Musharraf and his extraordinary powers, which will, in all likelihood, quickly be disassembled.

One of the sad facts of the Bush administration’s incoherent foreign policy is that it’s very hard to promote it abroad when you have such contempt for it at home.

A reader writes:

Hey, let’s not forget her blatant lie about the date. She was asked about reports that she got there the day after the border re-opened, and she specifically said no, she had arrived before that. That’s the most blatant, objectively verifiable, lie that I could imagine, and it seems like it’s not talked about enough, if at all.

"The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding church leader whom I have heard speak a number of times. He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. He has been a vocal critic of the racism, sexism and homophobia which still tarnish the American dream. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize. This is a critical time in America’s history as we seek to repent of our racism. No matter which candidates prevail, let us use this time to listen again to one another and not to distort one another’s truth," – Dean J. Snyder, Foundry United Methodist Church, March 19, 2008. Snyder is Hillary Clinton’s pastor, although I’m not sure how often she attends his church.

A reader writes:

I can’t help but wonder if your and my outrage at Hillary Clinton isn’t rooted in our Catholic/philosophic/theological upbringing where the truth is, really, God, and Clinton has nothing but utter contempt for it and will abandon it with impunity for her own narcissistic ends. Weren’t we taught the sin of pride is the most cardinal? Isn’t she almost iconically emblematic of that?

Sometimes it just makes my hair stand up straight and I have to ignore it for a while because it makes me apoplectic. It’s not normal to feel this way, so it touches a nerve that’s deeper than the political. It’s moral and existential – if we would deconstruct her a la Sartre’s "Anti-Semite and Jew" she would typify the inauthentic person.

I’m sure it’s just because I’m a woman-hater, right?

Josh Marshall notes that Hillary Clinton had an interview with far-right former Clinton nemesis Richard Scaife and used the occasion to say that Jeremiah Wright ""would not have been my pastor." When subsequently challenged on why she had decided to take Sean Hannity’s view of the Wright affair, she said:

"Well I answered a question in an ed board today that was very specific about what I would have done. And you know I’m just speaking for myself, and I was answering a question that was posed to me."

Josh is kind of amazed. I guess I’m not. If the kitchen sink doesn’t work, as MoDo said on Larry King last night, try the boiler.

The Clintons finally agree to release their tax returns. We’ll see. Still no explanation for why they can’t release their 2006 return immediately.