The Plain Dealer looks at how the upcoming primary is playing in Cleveland’s black community with Mark Naymik’s article on the challenges faced by congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a Clinton supporter, and Margaret Bernstein’s on Obama’s church support. The latter focuses on Olivet Institutional Baptist Church and its pastor, Otis Moss, Jr. (Moss’s son, III, has just taken over pastoral duties at Obama’s church in Chicago.) Anyone who imagines that the African American vote is going to come up anything but big for Obama in Cleveland needs to imagine again.
Both stories ought to give Americans United for Separation of Church and State conniptions, to say nothing of the IRS. But there’s a kind of default setting in American society that allows no-holds-barred politics in black churches. Politically mobilized white churches, liberal as well as conservative, don’t get the same waiver. I wish it bothered me more.