Word: explainer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That Clinton partisans want her to remain in the race is undoubtedly true. It is also largely irrelevant. Which is why Clinton is coming under pressure to explain her decision to continue through the summer, despite the nearly insurmountable lead Obama holds among elected delegates. "In order for your staying in to be regarded as anything more than the behavior of a sore loser," says a prominent unaligned Democrat, "you have to make the argument for how you'd be a winner. No one can articulate that argument...
...free-fire information war of a presidential campaign, such nuance can easily get lost in the sound bites. So for McCain, his ability to explain these complex relationships with lobbyists and monied interests is about to be tested. The appearance of impropriety may well be just that - appearance instead of reality. Nonetheless, McCain is now in the awkward position of hoping voters will give him the benefit of the doubt that he has denied to others...
Trinity's own Roman-like architecture is unfamiliar for a church, which might explain why some outsiders found it cultish and strange. The congregation meets in a theater-in-the round, designed after secular buildings like the Parthenon and the U.S. Congress. Stained-glass windows flanking the entrance feature images of African-American leaders, not saints: W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. There is also a glass sculpture of a man resembling Obama. Above it, light streams through block-lettered words: "VOTE. We need YOU." For now at least, Trinity may offer the only refuge...
...That desire for a more challenging faith helps explain the appeal of Trinity, despite its potential for controversy. The church, which has ministered to poor South Side families and Oprah Winfrey alike, isn't fringe, but neither is it a likely home for someone plotting a political career in Chicago. "If you're black and you're trying to get ahead in politics, you're not going to join Trinity," says Dwight Hopkins, a Trinity member who is also a professor at U. of C.'s Divinity School. "Not because it's radical - it isn't radical in its context...
...left Trinity for one of those more staid black churches, but he chose to stay. In his speech, he said he disagreed with Wright strongly, and yet he didn't leave the church (or even criticize his pastor until Wright's sermons became a campaign issue). He didn't explain why he stayed, but by trying to show black and white resentment as the backdrop for Wright's comments, Obama suggested that his response to controversy isn't to walk out of the room but to try to understand what's fueling the fire. He also drew a distinction between...