Today we witnessed a turning point in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination.  In a campaign that has seen many seminal moments (the Hope Guy upsetting the Hereditary Monarch in Iowa; the Hereditary Monarch’s tears pre-New Hampshire; the Wallflower 42nd president chuckling over comparisons between Jesse Jackson and the Hope Guy; sniper fire; the rantings of a neo-segregationist preacher), this seminal moment may be the most important of all.

Barack Obama went before the cameras today to do something just a few weeks ago he said he wouldn’t do.  He “denounced” his longtime pastor, confidante, and close friend, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for Wright’s incendiary comments about America and certain groups of Americans.

On March 18th in Philadelphia, he said, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community….These people are a part of me.”

That, of course, was the truth.  The truth is that Obama cares deeply for Wright, the man who counseled him, married him to Michelle, baptized his daughters.  The truth is Obama appreciated and respected Wright and his message enough to sit in his pews for 20 years.  The truth is that he didn’t want to disown or disavow him, because he believes in him.  The truth is he wanted political distance from Wright without having to throw his friend completely under the bus.

All of that changed over the past five days, when Wright embarked on his “Pastor Ambition Tour” and reiterated—this time, in “context”—his most inflammatory comments: that the U.S. government created the HIV virus to decimate the black community, that we deserved the attacks of September 11, that Louis Farrakhan is someone to admire greatly, and that God does, in fact, damn America.

After five days of having those comments sit out there, festering and metastasizing, Obama had to do what he didn’t want to do.  And say what he didn’t—doesn’t—want to say.

Reverend Wright’s comments were “offensive,” he said, and “they should be denounced, and that’s what I’m doing here today.”

He also proclaimed himself “outraged.”

“Outrage” of this kind, however, doesn’t develop days, weeks, months, years after the fact.  If Obama had been genuinely outraged, we would have heard about that outrage a lot sooner than today.

He referred to Wright’s Monday morning speech and Q and A session, where many of these comments were reiterated and detailed, a “spectacle.”

Did Obama not think Wright’s ranting and raving from the pulpit was also not a “spectacle?”  How many of those sermons did Obama sit through without thinking any of them were “spectacles?”

He said that the Wright he has seen over the past few days “was not the person I met 20 years ago,” and “I may not know him as well as I thought.”

By all accounts, Wright has been speaking this way, preaching this way, and believing this way since Obama began attending his church.  Where was Obama?  Where was he in the church, and where was he in the friendship?

The answer, of course, is that Obama was intimately present in both.  He wants us to believe he’s breaking with Wright because he’s suddenly “outraged” by his comments.  The truth is he’s “outraged” by the fact that Hillary is now gaining on him.  He hasn’t won a primary since February 22.  She just picked up the endorsement of the governor of North Carolina, which will host another big primary next week.  Obama is looking at internal polls that show Wright is a bigger drag on him than Bill is on her.

This is the only reason we heard this statement from Obama today.  Not because he wanted to give it; not because he believes what he said.  He had to do it, or watch the Hereditary Monarch and her Certifiable Husband walk away with the nomination.  (Mighty telling that we’ve heard nary a peep from either of them in the last 48 hours.)

This may very well be the end of the Hope Guy.  It is certainly the end of his “different kind of politics.”  He polled and tested and focus-grouped, saw the need for damage control, made a statement he doesn’t believe, and cut his friend loose.  He is no longer Barack Obama, Transcendent Messiah, but Barack Obama, Regular Pol.

Ciao for now, Pastor.  (But just for now.)

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