Obama and Jackson

Obama may have won the election. Jesse Jackson may have just handed it to him.

Specifically, Jackson may have handed Obama his Sister Souljah moment.

The general significance of that term is a moment when a politician gains credence beyond his base by a confrontation with someone within his base.

The paradigmatic example involves -- the very same Reverend Jesse Jackson. Sister Souljah herself was too insignificant a phenomenon to deserve attention except to the extent that Jackson took her seriously, and invited her to speak at a conference of the Rainbow Coalition.

Anyway, Clinton understood that anyone who would be offended by his criticism of Souljah would be no real threat to him -- since the alternative was George H.W. Bush.

Obama has tried to distance himself from Jeremiah Wright and that crowd. But Jackson's now-infamous remarks into a live mike do the job for him, and Obama has very little need to say anything more.

And what, after all, would he say? "Please keep that guy away from me if he's holding garden shears?

Ah, La Comedie Humaine.