The Jeremiah Wright affair

The trouble with uncles

Barack Obama is having the worst fortnight of his campaign

REALISTS (there are a few) within the Clinton campaign must have asked themselves, over the past dismal months, whether the war was worth the fighting. Hillary Clinton has no reasonable chance of catching up with Barack Obama's lead in elected delegates. Only this weekend Mr Obama added another nine delegates to his tally in Iowa's spring convention, putting him just under 170 clear of Mrs Clinton. Even when you add in the superdelegates, where Mr Obama has trailed Mrs Clinton, the totals are still 1,627 to 1,494: an Obama lead of 133.

But if Mrs Clinton cannot win the nomination, perhaps Mr Obama can lose it. That is the hope that has kept Mrs Clinton alive. And it is a hope that has come a bit closer to being realised in recent days.

The Obama campaign has been topsy-turvied by revelations about the eccentric views of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Mr Wright has been shown on video urging his congregation to sing “God damn America” rather than the usual version, and referring to America as “the US of KKKA”. This was not a momentary aberration but part of a pattern of incendiary rhetoric.

Mr Wright believes that September 11th 2001 was “chickens coming home to roost”. He accuses the American government of manifold evils, from manufacturing the AIDS virus in order to kill blacks and grinding the faces of the world's poor (“America is still the number-one killer in the world”). Mr Wright is an admirer of both Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, and Muammar Qaddafi, the president of Libya.

Mr Obama has spent the past few days on the television responding to endless replays of his pastor's greatest hits. He likened Mr Wright (who has recently retired) to “an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with,” and claimed that he had not been present when any of the incendiary sermons were delivered.

Mr Obama also used the opportunity to dump some more bad news. He told reporters that his relationship with Tony Rezko, a Chicago property developer and former Obama fund-raiser who is on trial in federal court, was closer than he has said, and that his campaign has received more money from him than it had admitted ($250,000 rather than $150,000).

None of this is very convincing. Mr Wright was not an uncle but the man who brought Mr Obama to God. Mr Obama has been a member of his Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years. Mr Wright presided at his wedding and baptised his children. Mr Obama even borrowed the title of his bestselling autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope”, from one of Mr Wright's sermons.

Mr Obama addressed his “Wright problem” at greater length in a speech in Philadelphia on March 18th. He made no attempt to distance himself from Mr Wright (“I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community”). But he argued that there is more to the reverend than a handful of noxious remarks: his church has been doing good works in Chicago for 30 years. Then he turned his speech into a broad discussion of race—a subject that he has hitherto touched on only lightly in his campaign.

He argued that the original sin of slavery and segregation has left deep scars on black America. Mr Wright's anger is shared by many black Americans who were born in a country that denied them basic rights. But he softened this with a more ecumenical message. He argued that blacks bear some responsibility for their plight. He sympathised with white voters who feel short-changed by affirmative action. And he argued that America is making strides in addressing the racial divide. Mr Wright's mistake was not his anger at America's past sins but his failure to understand that the country is evolving beyond them. Mr Obama's message, in the end, was that his own presidential campaign is the solution to the resentments his pastor expressed.

This was extremely well done, a speech that challenged Americans' intelligence rather than insulting it. Mr Obama went some way towards addressing the criticism that his association with Mr Wright undercuts his message of racial reconciliation. He also demonstrated that he can use his formidable rhetorical powers to address difficult subjects rather than simply to rev up a sympathetic crowd.

But the Wright affair could still cause problems with white voters, particularly the white working-class voters whom Mr Obama has had trouble with in the past, most recently in Ohio. There are two things that annoy these people more than anything else—insulting America and playing the victim card. Mr Wright did not just argue that America's past is imperfect; he blamed it for mass-murder. He did not just complain about slavery; he said that whites are continuing to oppress blacks.

A recent poll suggests the affair could end up costing Mr Obama votes: 56% of all voters and 44% of Democratic voters said that Mr Wright's comments made them less likely to vote for Mr Obama (though 11% of voters said they made them more likely to vote for him). But pundits will have to wait for the Pennsylvania primary, on April 22nd, to see whether this is a blip or a longer-term problem. A new Quinnipiac University poll shows Mrs Clinton increasing her lead among white voters in Pennsylvania from 56% to 37% on February 14th to 61% to 33% on February 27th.

Mr Obama's association with the likes of Messrs Wright and Rezko also raises doubts about his judgment, a virtue that he has stressed, particularly over the Iraq war, to trump Mrs Clinton's claim to experience. There is not only the question of why he associated with Mr Wright in the first place (arguing that he represents the “black church” is rather like arguing that Al Sharpton represents the black civil-rights movement). There is also the question of why Mr Obama waited for the recent media firestorm to distance himself from the reverend. Questions about his judgment take on a particular significance at a time when the economy is in trouble, and people are looking for steady leadership.

Mr Obama is not the only candidate with rattling skeletons. Mrs Clinton has refused to release her recent tax returns (as Mr Obama has done) and given everybody the run-around on the question of her White House records. But one thing is clear: the row and the Democratic deadlock are wonderful for John McCain, who is looking like the luckiest man in American politics.