One of the things you heard a lot from Obama supporters over the last couple of weeks was the rueful observation that the Jeremiah Wright controversy would at least greatly reduce the whisper-campaign-fed perception that he’s a Muslim. Not so, says a new Pew poll.
There is little evidence that the recent news about Obama’s affiliation with the United Church of Christ has dispelled the impression that he is Muslim. While voters who heard “a lot” about Reverend Wright’s controversial sermons are more likely than those who have not to correctly identify Obama as a Christian, they are not substantially less likely to still believe that he is Muslim. Nearly one-in-ten (9%) of those who heard a lot about Wright still believe that Obama is Muslim.
The percentage of Americans believing Obama’s a Muslim ranges from 14% among Republicans, to 10% among Democrats, to 8% among independents. At the risk of repeating one of those misleading triple-loaded poll findings, 23% of white Democrats with an unfavorable opinion of Obama think he’s a Muslim.
Moreover, a third of poll respondents–and a third of Democrats–say they don’t know what religion Barack Obama observes.
Otherwise, the Pew poll has a lot of welcome findings for Obama, showing a positive reaction to his “race speech,” and leads over HRC and McCain roughly the same as they found a month ago. But it’s beginning to become obvious that the “Obama is a Muslim” thing has become one of those ineradicable myths that evidence to the contrary can’t shake.
3 comments on “Obama the Muslim and his Christian Preacher”
MadamMijanou on
The strangest and most confusing thing about this Obama is a Muslim – is coming from fellow black people here on Long Island. Whenever I try to correct my fellow workers, I am winked at, laughed at, all as if I really don’t have a clue to what is going on. When my correction comes that he is a Christian, I get a “yeah right”. “he is a Muslim”. It seems that the black people here on long island ( I cannot speak for the rest of the country) are continuing this Myth?, for the purpose of bringing those people of the black race who prefer him to be muslim into the fold. Once the rumors started that he was a muslim, the money coming into his campaigne quadrupled, and he no longer had to prove if he was black enough. So I am a very confused white woman right now. One thing I was told, is that he is Farrakhans neighbor and they are tighter than anyone knows. Why hasn’t the media picked up on this?
The Wright mess isn’t going away. Obama knows it. Why else would he go on The View on a Friday and attempt to further distance himself from his pastor? He should have ditched the guy last year. This isn’t something you can talk your way out of. (I don’t think the Obama campaign considered the video impact of Wright’s rants.)
Well, just a sweep of the tabloids at check out at the grocery, they’ve been screaming about Obama is a Muslim for weeks now. Thinking thats probably where more than few people get their news, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are helping to fuel the rumors.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
The strangest and most confusing thing about this Obama is a Muslim – is coming from fellow black people here on Long Island. Whenever I try to correct my fellow workers, I am winked at, laughed at, all as if I really don’t have a clue to what is going on. When my correction comes that he is a Christian, I get a “yeah right”. “he is a Muslim”. It seems that the black people here on long island ( I cannot speak for the rest of the country) are continuing this Myth?, for the purpose of bringing those people of the black race who prefer him to be muslim into the fold. Once the rumors started that he was a muslim, the money coming into his campaigne quadrupled, and he no longer had to prove if he was black enough. So I am a very confused white woman right now. One thing I was told, is that he is Farrakhans neighbor and they are tighter than anyone knows. Why hasn’t the media picked up on this?
The Wright mess isn’t going away. Obama knows it. Why else would he go on The View on a Friday and attempt to further distance himself from his pastor? He should have ditched the guy last year. This isn’t something you can talk your way out of. (I don’t think the Obama campaign considered the video impact of Wright’s rants.)
Well, just a sweep of the tabloids at check out at the grocery, they’ve been screaming about Obama is a Muslim for weeks now. Thinking thats probably where more than few people get their news, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are helping to fuel the rumors.