The New York Times reports that one of the uncommitted superdelegates had this to say about the Obama-Wright controversy: “I’m a little surprised at how much traction it is getting, and I do believe it is beginning to reflect negatively on Senator Obama’s campaign,” Ms. Macoll said. “I think he’s handling it very well, but I think it’s almost impossible to make people feel comfortable about this.”

There’s the rub. It just plays bad. This is why my initial reaction to Obama’s otherwise masterful speech on race relations in Philadelphia was that it hadn’t gone far enough. He needed to make then the type of denunciation he finally made yesterday. The problem is that the most retarded assertions that Wright has made of late (e.g., that the U.S. somehow manufactured AIDS and released it on the black community; Wright seeming to have forgotten that AIDS initial victims were largely in the gay community, and yet we don’t hear that community crying ‘government conspiracy’), are the very same assertions that caused this dust up in the first place. I’m glad that Obama is denouncing them now. But why didn’t he then? And while none of this sways my vote, I do find myself asking why he didn’t speak up years and years ago if this is the kind of sermon that Wright typically gave to his church each week. I wouldn’t have to hear this kind of nut job wackiness more than once before I’d be looking for a new church.

I fear that this side show is going to cost Obama the Indiana primary. Democrats in that state are more conservative, and there are more independents voting in the primary, and I just don’t see any of this playing well in the mid-West. (We lefty pinko commie types on the east coast are more forgiving.)