BARACK AND A HARD PLACE

Well, I suspected we'd see a day when Sen. Barack Obama would give up his membership with  Trinity United Church of Christ, and that day has come to pass. After comments by a Catholic guest pastor Fr. Mike Pflegler began to reverberate on YouTube and CNN, Obama denounced the comments and then went the extra mile by removing himself from the congregation altogether. He says he did it for the good of the church. Others say he didn't have a choice: stuck between a rock and a hard place. Church folk are unforgiving, and he'll have a lot of explaining to do, down the road, no matter how the race for the White House shakes out.

He's taken the easy way out, though I can hardly blame him. Either he stayed with the church and make White voters nervous, or he quit the church and make Black church goers — who vote religiously, figuratively and literally— give him the side eye and question his allegiance to The Cause. There was no right thing to do, no way to appease everyone. In the end, he had to do what will get him the vote, and retain his voter base. I don't know that all parties are happy, or that it even matters. Obama has done all he can to make it right.

But the big question is Why does Obama have to be made to answer for anyone that was ever associated with him anyways? That is wrong, above and beyond what we should reasonably ask for from our president, in my view.  Obama must at some point take this stand, or he will be answering forever, for the misspeaking of his butcher, the crossing-guard, the cashier at Family Dollar and everyone in between. There will be short-term benefits as Whites breathe a sigh of relief that they are not supporting a radical, but while people in the pews forgive, they may not forget.  People in the barbershop will not forget, and White people will throw it in his face: under pressure, Obama gave in. But it was an impossible choice with unpredictable results.

TELL US: Will Obama's choice to leave his church harm his image with religious voters?

Image courtesy of dailylife.com

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Comments

[Cobb]

It's because Obama is trying to run on character. What he won't do is come out and say, explicitly the truth that everybody knows, which is that he is a leftist politician in the exact same way Jessie Jackson was when he ran for president. By being unwonky and doing music videos and three syllable slogans, he is inviting people to take HIM as a new kind of politician, instead of a party line kind of guy. He has stepped away from the mainstream political playbook, and the cost is that in order to be judged by different standards, your personal life is on the line.