As a conservative, I do find some humor in the hubris as the Democrats spin towards the upcoming disaster in Denver.

It's hard to know ... in fact, it's hard to care ... what impact Pastorgate has had on Barack Obama in the polls. You can pretty much search Google News with any result in mind and find date from some source to support your own beliefs about how the controversy has effected the Senator.

USA Today has Obama slightly ahead of Hillary, other sources call the same numbers a tie. Jim Geraghty at NR looks at some of the poll numbers and scratches his head:

First, 82 percent of respondents are aware of "the situation regarding Sen. Barack Obama's church pastor and the past public remarks he has made," and somehow, 83 percent are aware of "Obama's speech on Tuesday, in which he addressed the issue of his pastor." (Okay, who's the one percent who knew about the speech but not the 'situation'?)

Asked of all voters, "taking all this into account, are you more likely or less likely to support Obama for president" — 20 percent more likely, 49 percent less likely, 27 percent about the same.

Among those who answered that they were "aware" to the first two questions, 19 percent said they were more likely to support Obama, 52 percent said they were less likely, and 27 percent the same.

Among whites, the "less likely" answer came from 51.3 percent. Among blacks, it was 56.2 percent. (!) Among Hispanics, 54.5 percent. (The sub-sample sizes for blacks and Hispanics were 85 and 46, so it's possible that maybe it's too small a sample to get a really good reading on these demographics)...

Is it possible that some folks don't want to admit to a pollster that Obama's speech made them less likely to support him?

Emphasis in the last paragraph was mine. And it's a very good question. As Victor David Hanson points out, Obama's supposed recovery speech actually made things worse in the eyes of many people:

The more the pundits gushed about the speech, the more the average Americans thought, “Wait a minute — did he just say what I thought he said?” It’s not lost on Joe Q. Public that Obama justified Wright’s racism by offering us a “landmark” speech on race that:

(1) Compared Wright’s felony to the misdemeanors of his grandmother, Geraldine Ferraro, the Reagan Coalition, corporate culture, and the kitchen sink.

(2) Established the precedent that context excuses everything, in the sense that what good a Wright did (or an Imus did) in the past outweighs any racist outburst of the present.

(3) Claimed that the voice of the oppressed is not to be judged by the same rules of censure as the dominant majority that has no similar claim on victim status.

What is happening, ever so slowly, is that the public is beginning to realize that it knows even less after the speech than it did before about what exactly Obama knew (and when) about Wright’s racism and hatred.

And the more we learn about Obama's "church," the harder it is to see it as a church. This is, after all, an organization that printed an Israel-bashing article from Hamas in it's bulletin. Of course, Obama says he didn't know about that, either.

Is there anything that goes on at Trinity United that Barack Obama does know about? And if not, why does he call it his church?

Not that anyone in the MSM is gonna put that question to him. The MSM is, by and large, doing everything they can to help Obama spin his way out of this mess.

I thought that passportgate would provide the distraction that Obama needed to try to get past the Jeremiah Wright controversy, but it's hard to deny that the passport scandal was a political fart in a wind tunnel. Oddly, the CEO of the company that employees the contractor who peeked at Obama's passport is an Obama consultant. It still strikes me as dumb to allow contractors access to that kind of information, but seems undeniable that the guy was just a snoop and not a GOP black-opps agent.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Democratic divide, Hillary Clinton finds herself trying to spin her way out of one more lie:

Hillary Clinton's campaign acknowledged today that she may have misspoken when she described a harrowing visit to Bosnia while first lady.

"I remember landing under sniper fire," she said last week as she sought to burnish her commander-in-chief credentials. "There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Really? Landing under sniper fire? Running with your head down? Let's see, does any video exist of your visit to Bosnia? Oh, there is video? Let's look at it, shall we?

What is it with Democrats and lying? Can they breathe without lying? And do they have to do so much of it while campaigning (remember Christmas in Cambodia?), making it all so transparent?

Jeez, what a national embarrassment the Democratic party is ... and has always been. I agree with Bob Parks that America is more than ready for a black and/or female President. But I also agree with him that there's no way that President will be a Democrat. The Democratic party's history precludes that possibility:

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