Zero hour: Obama delivering ‘important’ speech on race this morning

Like any spiritual adviser worth his or her keep, Jeremiah Wright Jr. has led Barack Obama to a place he did not want to go but needed to go. This morning in Philadelphia, Obama is delivering a speech on race in America that his campaign is billing as a major address on the subject.

That also makes it his first talk on the subject since the presidential campaign commenced in earnest and in the full glare of media attention. Back in March 2007, Obama delivered a speech (full text) on the legacy of the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama, in which he claimed that the efforts of the 1950s and ’60s “took us 90 percent of the way there. We still got that 10 percent in order to cross over to the other side.”

Really? 90 percent? Most of black America likely would not agree. Thus Obama faces peril on both sides of the racial divide that white America by and large believes to be a thing of the past. 

Quoth the New York Times: “Mr. Obama continued to write the speech on Monday evening, which he believes could be one of the most important of his presidential candidacy, aides said. His wife, Michelle, had not been scheduled to travel with him this week, but hastily made plans to be in Philadelphia.”

We’ll post the text of that speech when it’s available. Meantime, here is video of Obama’s first faltering attempt to explain Wright’s point of view and at the same time distance himself from it, from last Friday’s Countdown.