Mea Culpa
Blogging in haste this morning, I relied on my memory of what Daniel Larison wrote about Obama and Wright contemporaneously rather than going back to confirm my recollection. This was not just lazy and unjust but erroneous. If you look especially at Larison’s discussion of the first "post-Wright poll" and his first reaction piece to Obama’s race speech, what you actually see is a writer being very careful not to oversell his analysis of the politics of the controversy, and to be scrupulous in his criticism of the substance. My apologies to Daniel Larison.
Comment by Brodysattva —
April 14, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
Oh gosh, Jim, I don’t know. At the first link, he says “This may be the beginning of a hemorrhaging of support for Obama,” and points out that when he “floated the prospect of a 1964-like landslide if Obama were the Democratic nominee (with Obama playing the role of Goldwater),” that was perhaps an overstatement of the case, “but not necessarily by that much.”
Sure, he dresses it up in the language of what might be instead of what is, but I don’t see where you get the idea that he is “being very careful not to oversell his analysis of the politics of the controversy, and to be scrupulous in his criticism of the substance.” You’re being too much a gentleman, taking him at his word when he implies that his prediction of Obama “hemorrhaging” support is no more than one among many possibilities that he is dispassionately entertaining, instead of an awfully tendentious reading of a single opinion poll, over which you can practically hear him salivating. You’re the better man for it, but you owe him no apology and no retraction.
Comment by Barry —
April 15, 2008 @ 8:00 am
Time will tell, and soon, IMHO. If Daniel becomes the domestic equivalent of those who’ve been writing off Sadr for the past five years, …