Party Leaders Concerned Voters Will Not Unify After Nominee is Chosen

In the race to the Democratic nomination, tensions between the campaigns of rival Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., are so uncomfortable some party leaders are openly concerned Democratic voters will not unify after a nominee is chosen.
Much of the tension is based at least in part on racial divisions -- and into the dynamic walked the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's controversial former pastor.

Speaking the National Press Club in Washington on Monday, Wright called the recent criticism surrounding his sermons "an attack on the black church" explaining his emergence before a national audience, regardless of what harm it might do to the candidacy of Obama.
This is not about Obama, McCain, Hillary, Bill or Chelsea, this is about the black church," Wright said, speaking before the Washington press corps and an enthusiastic audience of black church leaders at the onset of a two-day symposium.

Obama's controversial former pastor was defiant as he spoke to a room packed with non-journalistic supporters, defending himself, dismissing Obama's criticism of him as mere political expedience, and jokingly offering himself as a vice presidential prospect. He clearly was not doing Obama any favors, not only by reappearing before a ravenous media thus distracting from Obama's attempt to relate better to white working class voters in Indiana and North Carolina, but by implying Obama's condemnation of some of his sermons was not sincere.

"Politicians say what they say and do what they do because of electability," Wright said, arguing that Obama had not seen the sermons played in the media that Obama has called "offensive." "He had to distance himself because he's a politician...Whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God."