DIRTY TRICKS, WRIGHT BECOME CENTERPIECE OF NC PRIMARY

I’ll admit that, of late, I care about as much about the Democratic presidential nomination process as I do the Allendale County School System’s fifth grade science fair — although I here Bobby Smith’s baking soda volcano is totally going to beat out Susie Parker’s salt map — but the North Carolina primary has become interesting for two reasons.

The first is that our cousins to the north have decided to inject a little bit of our good old fashioned dirty politics into their otherwise boring snooze-fest:

Who’s behind the mysterious “robo-calls” that have spread misleading voter information and sown confusion and frustration among North Carolina residents over the last week?

Facing South has confirmed the source of the calls, and the mastermind is Women’s Voices Women Vote, a D.C.-based nonprofit which aims to boost voting among “unmarried women voters.”

What’s more, Facing South has learned that the firestorm Women’s Voices has ignited in North Carolina isn’t the group’s first brush with controversy. Women’s Voices’ questionable tactics have spawned thousands of voter complaints in at least 11 states and brought harsh condemnation from some election officials for their secrecy, misleading nature and likely violations of election law.

First, a quick recap: As we covered yesterday, N.C. residents have reported receiving peculiar automated calls from someone claiming to be “Lamont Williams.” The caller says that a “voter registration packet” is coming in the mail, and the recipient can sign it and mail it back to be registered to vote. No other information is provided.

The call is deceptive because the deadline has already passed for mail-in registrations for North Carolina’s May 6 primary. Also, many who have received the calls — like Kevin Farmer in Durham, who made a tape of the call that is available here — are already registered. The call’s suggestion that they’re not registered has caused widespread confusion and drawn hundreds of complaints, including many from African-American voters who received the calls. [DailyKos]

I’m glad to see this is happening because, before this, following North Carolina politics pretty much resembled a game of backgammon at a nursing home. Way to go, y’all!

Also, what’s the over-under that Warren Tompkins is a consultant/lobbyist for Women’s Voices Women Vote?

But perhaps even more exciting than these calls is that Barack Obama has chosen North Carolina as the place to essentially dismantle his presidential bid over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal.

Even if Obama survives the North Carolina primary and holds on to win his party’s nomination, the general election will be hell for a man whose pastor publicly preaches, as he did Monday at the National Press Club, that the U.S. government was responsible for bringing AIDS into the black community and that Louis Farrakhan is one of the greatest Americans to ever live.

The only way Obama can escape this issue is if he is able to distance himself from Wright. But that is proving incredibly difficult.

Many Americans did not have to wait for Wright’s talk to the National Press Club to have taken offense. In fact, there is nothing the Reverend said Monday or with Bill Moyers on PBS, or at the NAACP dinner in Detroit (to thunderous ovations) that was in any substantive way different from what he has been saying over and over again for decades (to thunderous applause among the thousands packing Trinity Church). [...]

Obama has been showing up at Wright’s church for close to 20 years and was exposed to his brand of crackpot racist anti-American lunacy on more than one occasion during this long period. [RICHARD BAEHR - Real Clear Politics]

I don’t think that Republican nominee John McCain or Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton will even need someone like Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm to put together a set of advertisements blasting Obama for Wright’s statements. Just put 30 seconds from one of his sermons — any 30 seconds from any sermon — and that will put the nail in Obama’s campaign. And it might not be a bad idea to splice in a few clips of Obama looking like a chump while scrimmaging with the University of North Carolina’s basketball team for good measure.