On WTTW's Chicago Tonight yesterday, the Sun-Times' Laura Washington echoed the widely-held sentiment that the controversy this week over Rev. Jesse Jackson's comments about Barack Obama represented a "huge favor" to the Democratic nominee. The logic is: A) white working class voters wary of electing a black president will be encouraged to see Obama and Jackson in a fight; and B) the flap preempted the rash of stories about unrest in progressive circles over Barack's perceived shift to the center.
Watch it:
The Reader's Mick Dumke expressed a similar opinion on Clout City yesterday:
The only people possibly damaged by Jesse Jackson's "I want to cut his nuts off" remark about Barack Obama are John McCain and the Reverend Jackson himself.
This is not like the racial-theory sermons of Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger. Those clergymen were tagged as mentors and allies of Obama's at the time they were seen on tape giving extended diatribes about the sins of powerful white people. When you're a black candidate trying to convince skeptical heartland types that you really do love America, that sort of thing is a blow.
But when Jesse Jackson rips you for not being enough like Jesse Jackson, that's a blessing from the heavens.
Dumke goes on to make a convincing case that it was actually Jesse Jackson Jr. who benefited the most from the flap.
But while I see the broader "blessing" argument, I'd have to say the "curse" wins out here. I don't agree with Washington that this controversy supressed the "progressives-question-Obama" stories -- those items were already falling out of the news cycle. To the contrary, I think the Jackson incident has distracted away from what has arguably been the worst week of John McCain's general election campaign. At the Huffington Post yesterday, Max Bergman provided a useful run-down:
McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday!
But what story do you think has gotten most of the play on the cable news networks these past few days?
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