Per usual, Joan Walsh is carrying water for Hillary. Is Obama "out of the woods?" Joan, if "the woods" is Hillary supporters like you and right-wing hysterics, who cares? This issue always was, is now, and will forever be completely bogus.

In spite of all the earnest long faces and forced indignation about Wright's thunderous sermons and their "impact" on our fragile sensibilities, there is only one reason why this non-starter is even an issue:

both Hillary and McCain are afraid that Obama could actually win.

Some quick analysis:

The Trinity United story has been around for some time. Obama had already denounced his pastor's comments before the South Carolina primary. See this article in the religious website, BeliefNet (see page 2):

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/228/story_22894_1.html

Also, see this NY Times piece from last April: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin.

Given that it was out there in the NY Times (not exactly the subterranean, knuckle-dragging, right-wing press), and most in the media glossed right over it for months, suggests that something else was afoot.

That something else was success.

It should be no coincidence to anyone following this campaign closely that the rise of this story coincided with the fall of the Clinton campaign. Now, before the Clinton CAPS LOCK crowd pounces, I am not suggesting Hillary's campaign formally pushed the story. Instead, I think the right-wing, seeing their easy-to-beat candidate already being beaten, kicked into high gear for their own nefarious purposes. The Clinton campaign only had to sit back and watch - which is what they did.

No one on either side expected Obama to handle the controversy as deftly as he did. In spite of his remarkable success in this campaign, the pundit classes (who are favorable to him and vulnerable to his charms) never completely understood him. And they were as shocked as the Clintons, after the initial polling following Obama's race speech, at how little impact the issue had on him.

And that's when the Clinton campaign (and its surrogates like Joan Walsh) formally engaged in the Wright issue and joined forces with the right-wing as its official Bride of Frankenstein.

Because of that unholy marriage, the rest of us are now stuck talking ad nauseum and ad infinitum about this ancillary figure, Rev. Wright, as though he himself were the presidential candidate. It's a great big game of pretend.

The upside is that the whole issue underscores a single, critical point: Obama is winning.

Full disclosure: I'm a man, so do with my input what you will. Just a quick data point that seems lost in the sexism vs. racism discussions that have emerged in this campaign. A key, overlooked demographic throughout this campaign have been those people who are victims of both racism and sexism: black women. The voting data shows that black women have voted 80% Obama over Clinton. Does this mean that for this critical demographic the tolls of racism trump those of sexism? I don't know, but I think they might be the only people in the electorate to help all of us understand these particular dynamics. Why are black women overwhelmingly supporting Obama?

The secondary storyline of this campaign is simple: boomer control of the establishment is waning. The ideals of the Sixties were never fully realized, and boomers themselves are having a tough time letting go. But let go they must. It's time to pass the torch to a younger generation. Same as it ever was.

Jeez, Salon. Give it a rest already. Who cares what this guy says? Your coverage of his every utterance as though he were Jesus himself is sensational, yellow journalism in its purest form. As Wright himself said, he is not running for president. So why do we care? Is it because we're fascinated by the points of view Wright expresses, or the spectacle of hearing opinions from a corner of our culture that we'd like to continue to ignore? Or maybe it's just an attempt to prop up Hillary's reckless campaign. Who knows? All I'm sure of is that the national obsession with Jeremiah Wright is no longer Barack Obama's problem, it's the media's.

Yawn. Hillary is just out on the campaign trail, pandering per usual. I'm not sure how this is any different than whiskey shots in PA, riding around in a pick-up truck in IN, dropping her G's in the south, pushing a bogus gas tax scheme in NC and IN, carrying on about shooting guns in Scranton, sitting down with Richard Mellon Sciafe in Pittsburgh, teasing Rush Limbaugh in NC. She goes to a state, sizes up her odds, looks at her internal polling, appeals to the voters she thinks she can win, and then moves on the next state and applies the same formula. Simple. (And it doesn't seem to matter to her supporters that these state-to-state changes require adopting completely different personae - making her look fragmented and unstable.) The difference now is that she's running out of groups to pander to, so she's been forced to become more direct and explicit. Thus invoking the word "white" a couple of times (it wasn't just once) in a state that is - surprise! - 97% white. And it will work for her because the only real value in mentioning race at all in WV is to underscore the race of her non-white opponent. The polls there already have her through the roof. This will only help.

What's left out of the discussion is not that Obama has a problem with whites (exit polling shows he's actually made gains there since Ohio) - he doesn't - it's that he has an issue with blue-collar voters. That's the issue, so it was certainly curious that Clinton had to qualify that by invoking race while sitting in WV. Again, you be the judge.