House Democratic Whip James Clyburn stays feisty, with some new verbal ammo, this time aimed at Jeremiah Wright:
"I have a daughter the same age as Barack Obama," said Clyburn, the most senior African American in Congress. "I've tried to provide shoulders for her to stand on. And I was absolutely saddened when it became clear to me Rev. Wright, rather than providing a shoulder for his parishioner to stand on, was engaged in some kind of knee-capping operation. That's not the kind of anatomical analogy we ought to be involved in."
He took particular umbrage with Wright's suggestion that attacks on him were attacks on the black church, writ large. But, said Clyburn, if Wright had done grievous damage to Obama, the candidate would not have picked up the endorsements over the past two days from former Democratic Party chief Joe Andrew or Rep. Baron Hill, who represents a conservative district in Southern Indiana.
"Just because one sets out to do damage doesn't mean it will be successful," Clyburn said. "I don't think it was successful."
Meanwhile, a NYT story on Indianapolis voters offers a telling insight into the minds of upscale Hoosier voters, and their projection of the attitudes of their downscale brethren:
INDIANAPOLIS — In the cafes, gift stores and the gourmet dog biscuit shop in this city’s neighborhood of Broad Ripple Village, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s name draws all sorts of responses — sighs, rolling eyes, laughter, grim silence.
But many people, like Clyde H. Crockett, a retired law professor who was sipping a drink in a coffee shop here on Thursday, said his thoughts about Mr. Wright would have no bearing on his decision — still unfinished — about whom to vote for in Indiana’s Democratic primary on Tuesday.
“Why should it?” Mr. Crockett said. “No one should be tainted because of Reverend Wright.”
The shoppers in Broad Ripple and in the neighborhoods nearby reflect a demographic group — mostly white, highly educated, professional, artsy, relatively well-off, politically independent — that has leaned toward Senator Barack Obama in other states and one that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will hope to gain an edge with here, in a state that polls show as almost evenly split.
But in interviews here on Thursday, voters said Mr. Wright’s highly publicized comments and the responses and echoes that have followed had had little bearing on them.
Supporters of both Democratic candidates said that they did not think the Wright episode should change the race but said, again and again, that they feared it might in other, less cosmopolitan areas of Indiana where they thought people might be searching for some acceptable explanation for not voting for a black candidate.
Mr. Crockett, who said he was leaning ever so slightly toward Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, his wife’s preferred candidate, said he worried that Mr. Obama’s ties to his former pastor could harm him among voters in the far southern part of the state, the small towns, the more conservative enclaves.
“I think Reverend Wright will give a lot of people an excuse not to vote for Obama,” Mr. Crockett said. “They’re looking for an excuse, and this will be it.” ...
And as they say, "as goes Indiana..."
UPDATE: Okay, I know I called this post the "Clyburn smackdown," but way to go John Kerry, smacking down MSNBC the other day!
