But in an important sense Jeremiah Wright’s recent foolishness is embedded within an ideological perspective that Barack has apparently accepted without question for 20 years or so. To be fair, I think his sadness is genuine. I don’t agree with co-blogger Joe that Obama is just a liar, though I do agree that he has been trying to have the best of two worlds... and it led him straight into a brick wall.

The narrative that began to emerge during last night’s Keith Olberman interview with Wapo’s Dana Milbank was that an enmity and rivalry has developed between Barack and his Pastor. (I almost said “former Pastor,” but that’s not yet clear is it?) If this amounts to a deliberate strategy, it’s impressively Machiavellian. To be honest, my own “turning away” from the Church of Social Justice took approximately a decade, and it’s still not complete. For instance, I just can’t choose between a “single payer” socialized medicine system and the notion that those who can’t pay should just suck it up and croak already. My beloved brother-in-law passed away recently, mostly because he couldn’t afford health care treatments that would have dealt his cancer. And the episode has impoverished my sister. But on the other side, the costs of these “drawing to an inside straight” treatments, were they paid for by the state, would leave the nation bankrupt. Life doesn’t guarantee immunity from dilemmas.

So my transition from Alinsky Warrior to Classical Public Choice Liberal hasn’t completely run its course. The latter has a more consistent philosophy, but it leaves large swaths of the public struggling against a tidal wave. So I’m hoping that little teeny weeny robots will come to the rescue. I tend to think social problems will eventually have technological solutions. The intermediate solution is probably therapeutic cloning, but ultimately the jackknife that will resolve the social dilemmas will be nanotech.

So the blame and victimization politics of a Jerry Wright look as stupid and foolish to me as the belief in a flat earth. And I don’t really comprehend why Obama is just now coming to grips with this problem, if he has even progressed that far. Where has he been for the last few decades?

I think this situation may well cost him the nomination, and at least the presidency. Given the hopes that people have, that’s sad... so I can understand his long face. Although it took him too long, in my view, to issue a public statement... he at least appears to be finally choosing sides. Or so it would seem if he similarly distanced himself from his wife’s recent illiberalisms.

I imagine there are a lot of Democrats right now who are fairly happy with the decision to install “super-delegates” as a last-minute stopgap against bad judgment. But Wright has ripped the scab off the wound, and it won’t be that easy to staunch the flow by November. I suspect the Democrats are at a real turning point, and they’re going to have to make choices based on something other than the victory odds in November. It is the sort of naked lunch they’ve avoided since the Lincoln/Douglas debates. Ironically, the chickens have made their long way home.