"Exactly. It's too bad that BO has been so intent on winning the primary that was willing to sacrifice the general in order to do it."

Replace BO w/HRC

Tell you what.  

Lets revisit a potential answer Obama could have given to Geffen's comments.  Is Clinton a liar?

OBAMA: Of course not.

KROFT: You don't believe that she's a liar or implying? Right.

OBAMA: No. No. Why would I? No, there is nothing to base that on, as far as I know.

KROFT: It's just scurrilous --

OBAMA: Look, I, myself, have been the target of many ridiculous attacks. I have a great deal of sympathy for anybody who gets, you know, smeared with those kinds of attacks that go on all the time.

That'd been fine with me.  I would have looked at that and said "good answer" and I wouldn't have ever started whining about the "as far as I know".

As it stood, he couldn't even do that much.

If you think she didn't say "No" there's nothing I can do about that at this point.

How can anybody "vouch" for another person's personal religious beliefs?  You may assume from observing the values their actions seem to you to reflect.

You can "take his word for it" if he tells you about his beliefs.  But you cannot know his heart and vouch for what he believes.

How can anybody who had ever been to law school flat out state that another person believes anything?   You get taught from the outset to tell the difference between direct evidence and hearsay, fact and assumption.

We assume he is not Muslim because he says he is not and he says he has attended a non-Muslim church for twenty years. But we cannot attest to his belief or anybody else's.  If we were being honest we would have to add, if repeatedly asked for the record, a statement of the reality...something like "as far as I know".

It is one of many cases when the obvious interpretation is skipped over , and the next and the next  until one arrives at a real stretch to something to get outraged about.  It has become one of the hallmarks of the Obama campaign and gives the appearence of  symptoms of some seriously divisive mentality.  What would you call it if a white candidate did it?  

Obama sells for profit the story that he used drugs as a young man, including cocaine.  If any person mentions that story that he revealed and published for money, then they must have a racist purpose to make some statement that all Blacks use drugs, or to make all whites vote against Obama.  How far a stretch is that?  Why can't it be said that he referred to doing things in his youth, like Robert Johnson said before he was forced to apologize?  Mr. Johnson, a wealthy very successful Black Hillary supporter was forced to step aside and publically humiliate himself because the Obama campaign sensitized the media that it was racist to mention or even hint at Obama's story of drug use...the one he told for money and fame.

The governor of New Hampshire's husband can say that the Republicans will use his admission of cocaine use against him in the general.  The Obama campaign and some media carry on about Billy Shaheen's "clear intention" to promote racist stereotypes and use totally untolerated language to the degree that he is forced to resign and Hillary's New Hamshire campaign advisor.  Geraldine Ferarro can say of her nomination to be Vice President that she believed it would not have happened had she been male, that Jesse Jackson would not have won so many primaries had he been white and that Obama would not be in this position if he were not Black.  She was talking about efforts to break down barriers for women and Blacks in these comments and about the support of people who have a strong interest in seeing those barriers broken.

Ferraro apparently thought it was obvious that the party has many members who have long supported the breaking of racial and gender barriers in political office. She might also have thought that winning 90% of the Black vote suggested some solidarity and pride among Black voters for the chance to vote for a Black candidate who might win. She has been one who has worked for it for  40 years.  But no.  We are not allowed to assume that is what she was talking about nor that those were her BELIEFS, acted upon publically for decades and stated repeatedly since the "incident". We must leap over what she asserts and the obvioust interpretation of her comment and go to some outer edge and assume that her intention was to belittle Obama and all of his accomplishments. It was an attack on Obama, once again. The racists are all after him.

We are to KNOW from our outrageous interpretation that she intended to offend all Black people and to arouse the ire of white voters .  And she is forced to leave the Clinton NY Finance Committee amid calls of "Racist".   And then the Clintons see their statements which have very obvious, benign content labeled in the campaign and the media as racist. We have white liberal and Black leaders take to the microphones to say that they had been called by Obama and apprised of a list of comments Obama found "very troubling".

Jesse Jackson said at the time that he told Obama he 'did not see the comments as racist' and that he had 'advised Obama to drop it and forget it'.  He said that Obama had reached him by phone at a meeting in India to tell him about the comments from the Clintons.

Kennedy endorsed Obama after the call and left immediately to campaign after going before the cameras to condemn the comments.  Rep Cliburn announced on a host of shows the next few days that he had been called and he warned he would go back on his word to remain neutral if the comments didn't stop.  It was a stunning disregard of several more obvious interpretations, whipped up directly by memo from the campaign to Black groups and media and a series of phone calls from Obama personally, followed by press events describing the calls.  

This active effort to "sensitize"  the media and leaders to how "offensive and troubling" these comments were give every appearance of a man who is either extremely thin-skinned, finds racists behind every corner and appeals for help to punish all those people out there trying to get him.  OR he is a calculating political smear merchant using the fact that he is Black to gain liberal white support and the solidarity of the Black voter by attributing racist motives to his opponents. This behavior, no matter how many speeches on race may follow, os not the behavior of  a uniter.  These are the actions give the appearance of much lower motives, as far as I know.

IN the Newsweek  piece on Obama this week is a story from his high school basketball coach.  He says that Barry accused him of benching him in a  game because the coach was a racist.  The coach says he told him that he benched him because he had just taken two bad shots in a row.
So this tactic is not recently acquired, apparently.