Obama’s Pastor Gets An Opinion Poll: 8% National Approval

It now turns out that there finally is someone more unpopular than Vice President Dick Cheney.

Pastor Jeremiah Wright, who has become part of the national political dialogue in recent days, is viewed favorably by 8% of voters nationwide. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 58% have an unfavorable view of the Pastor whose controversial comments have created new challenges for Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign.

Dick Polman contends Senator Barack Obama could survive in the Democratic nomination race but there are storm clouds ahead:

…the Wright factor may matter more down the road. As a nominee, Obama would need the working-class white Democrats who are currently voting for Hillary Clinton. If many of these voters come to believe (or are encouraged to believe) that Obama had chosen to be willfully oblivious about, among other things, “God damn America,” the ‘08 autumn showdown with John McCain could be extremely close.

Meanwhile, New York Times columnist Bill Kristol has apparently committed what my old (and young) former editors on newspapers called “a fatal” major error. He picked up an item from a website indicating Obama was there to hear an inflammatory Wright speech when, it turned out, Obama wasn’t and it can be confirmed he wasn’t.

Kristol writes:

In this column, I cite a report that Sen. Obama had attended services at Trinity Church on July 22, 2007. The Obama camapaign has provided information showing that Sen. Obama did not attend Trinity that day. I regret the error.

Marc Ambinder has some more details. Read his take on it. Just a small taste:

Bill Kristol’s New York Times column about Barack Obama this morning contains a major, prejudicial error… The error is in trusting the source without checking. The truth is that Obama did not attend church on July 22. He was on his way to campaign in Miami.

(Here is some video evidence.) This was before he signed an agreement forbidding himself from campaigning in Florida.

This points out a few things.

The campaign is now so heated on both sides that Republicans are ready to jump down the throats of Democrats, Democrats are ready to jump down the throats of Democrats — and the only person who doesn’t have to worry about anyone jumping down his throat is John McCain… who is busy getting info on Iraq and boosting his image via official U.S. Air Force photos of him arriving in Baghdad.

Too often journalists trust things on websites and don’t check them out. Blogs do it ALL THE TIME — complaining about the mass media when, in fact, most bloggers would have to shut down if the mass media weren’t there, since 98 percent of political blog posts are based on taking a mainstream media news story that someone else worked to report, linking to it, copying it and commenting on it. But bloggers (including yours truly) do not fact-check reports that they site (no time, no resources and in many cases no experience…but re-reporting stories is just not part of blogging).

But here is a bet you can put money on in Vegas:

Although Kristol noted his error, you will hear the same charge made on talk radio, still raised on some weblogs, and perhaps a variation of it in mailings if Obama runs against McCain. In reality, getting and using something you can charge someone with becomes more important than the accuracy or not.

Kristol made his correction because he is a professional and does have journalistic standards. Also, the Times would demand a correction.

Now the question becomes: is the Obama team preparing how to deal with likely continued fallout from Obama’s association with Wright? Can it deal with the issue not just to do well in upcoming primaries but to “inoculate” itself against the inevitable GOP ads and talk radio show riffs on the issue once the conventions are over?

If not, Obama could find his poll numbers may not be as low as 8 percent, but they won’t be as high as McCain’s.

For blog reaction go HERE.