Some of my conservative friends, I've noted, have tried to buttress their arguments concerning the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright affair by claiming that the public agrees with them that this is a big deal, that Obama is crashing in the polls.
But I don't see it.
See, for example, RealClearPolitics' roundup of the latest Election '08 polls for Tuesday, March 25th.
For the Pennsylvania primary, Rasmussen shows Senator Clinton with a 10 point lead over Obama. That sounds significant, except for the fact that polls a week or two ago showed her with over a 20 point lead there. Once again, Obama is closing the gap (as he's done in pretty much every state since January). Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Obama lead has not shrunk--it's lengthened. He's up by 21 points. The Tar Heel state holds firm for him. In national polls tracking Democrats' preference for the nomination, Gallup shows Obama still in the lead over Clinton; Rasmussen shows Clinton still with a slight lead. That hardly suggests that, among Democrats at least, Obama has hit the skids. Meanwhile, it's too early to tell what a potential McCain/Obama matchup might look like.
Obama still appears to me to be the likely Democratic Party nominee for president.
Republicans can't, meanwhile, count on the Wright issue to be a hot topic forever, or (therefore) for it to be some kind of magic bullet to use against Obama in the fall. There's going to have to be a better campaign waged, one against the principles and ideas held by Barack Obama, not those held by Jeremiah Wright.
