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Copyright by John T. Reed

One aspect of the Democrat choice of a presidential nominee is electability. The implication of Obama’s delegate lead is that the victories that gave it to him prove he is the stronger Democrat candidate.

Not so. Most of those victories came before the Jeremiah Wright videos came out. Since those videos, and Obama’s San Francisco gun/religion comments, Obama has repeatedly gotten his butt kicked by Hillary in primaries.

The November election will be conducted in the post-Wright era.

So Obama’s delegate lead is irrelevant, ancient history. Not only were they pre-Wright and pre-San Francisco, they were also from the charisma, rock star, messiah, fainting audience members, thrill-up-Chris-Matthews-leg period.

We are now in the bewildered, indecisive, can’t get-his-story-straight, too leftist, too inexperienced, fake-it-til-you-make-it Obama period.

If the Democrat primaries were held in the second half of 2008, as the November election will be, I do not think anyone believes that Obama would win the same number of delegates or that he would win as many as Hillary. The Democrats cannot run rock star charismatic Obama in November. That person no longer exists. And it is only that no-longer-existent person who is ahead in the delegates. The only Obama available to run in the November election is Reverend Wright’s erstwhile congregation member.

Can other stuff happen to Hillary between now and the election? Yes, but she is hardly the cipher Obama has deliberately made himself in spite of being 46 years old. The public is pretty well-informed as to what Hillary is about and who she is. She has been investigated and investigated. She should have been sent to jail, along with her husband, as far as I’m concerned ($100,000 bribe disguised as a commodities trade profit, lying on Whitewater loan applications, etc.) But she wasn’t. The current point is that she has been vetted. Obama is just now being vetted and it is not a pretty picture.

The reading I have done about Obama says over and over what a great mediator he is calming down opposing groups who are arguing with each other. That’s mildly interesting. Maybe he should be a marriage counselor or help unions and management to avoid or settle strikes. But the Presidency is a leadership or executive position. Big difference.

Also, there is another way to read Obama’s lifelong reputation for listening to both sides. He is incapable of taking a side. He needs everyone to like him—perhaps the result of being abandoned to one extent or another by all three of his parents—so he incessantly points out the merits of all sides. Incessantly. For him, such merit finding is not a means to an end of consensus or reconciliation. It is a means to endlessly postpone a decision or to avoid ever making anyone unhappy with him. “Can’t we all just get along?” You cannot lead like that. You have to make decisions and either persuade or defeat those who disagree with those decisions.

Can McCain stumble before November, or drop dead of a heart attack like his father did at age 70? Sure. But the Democrats need to make the working assumption that he will not. He, too, has been around a lot of years and has been through scandals like the Keating Five. There is probably not a lot unknown about McCain.

The result of Wright is that the public now finds Obama untrustworthy and incompetent and maybe too leftist. It is unlikely that the public will change their minds to that great an extent with regard to two such long-time public figures as Hillary and McCain.