INDIANAPOLIS - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Sunday it was time to move beyond the controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

 ”We should definitely move on,” the New York senator said in response to an audience member’s question on the ABC television program “This Week.”

“We should move on because there’s so many important issues facing our country that we have to attend to.”

Wright, who presided over the Illinois senator’s wedding and baptized his children, has dominated the news in recent weeks after repeating his position that the United States deserved some blame for the Sept 11, 2001 attacks and had created AIDS to harm black people.

Obama broke with the minister last week, calling his comments “outrageous.”

Clinton, who is trailing Obama in votes and delegates who determine the Democratic Party’s White House nominee, has said she would have left the church where Wright presided. Obama has been a member of the church since 1992.

ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos pressed Clinton on whether concerns about Wright should  be raised with superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials — whose support she needs to overcome Obama’s lead and clinch the nomination.

“Well, people talk about it,” she said. “There’s no doubt they talk about it.  But what people I think are more interested in is what we would do and what kind of president we would be.” 

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jeff Haynes  

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Barack Obama sought to distance himself further Friday from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, telling a North Carolina rally that comments by his former pastor that have been  described as ”crazy” should not be used to judge his candidacy.

Obama has said his presidential bid was damaged by a recent series of public appearances by Wright, in which the pastor repeated earlier charges the Sept. 11 attacks were retribution for U.S. foreign policy and that the U.S. government had a hand in spreading AIDS to blacks.

But the Illinois senator, locked in a battle for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Clinton, said earlier on Friday in Indianapolis he would leave it to the pollsters to analyze the extent of the impact from the Wright flap on his campaign.
Obama broke publicly with his longtime pastor earlier this week when he called a news conference to criticize Wright’s remarks as “outrageous” and “appalling.”

“As we’ve done well in this election, as we’ve been successful, increasingly my opponents have spent their time talking, not about the issues, but about me,” Obama told a rally of about 9,000 people at Charlotte’s Cricket Arena.

“They’ve been saying, ‘Well, look at those crazy things his former pastor said or he’s not wearing a flag pin or he’s got a funny name, sounds like he’s Muslim,’” he said. “Those are strategies to divide us. We’ve seen those strategies before.”

Obama said his critics were out of line in questioning his patriotism.

“You want to understand my patriotism? I owe everything to this country,” he said. 

Photo Credit: Reuters/Chris Keane (Obama speaks in Charlotte, N.C.)

Barack Obama says his campaign for U.S. president clearly has suffered damage from a series of controversies over the past few weeks, but he is trying to move forward without “obsessing” over the setbacks.

Obama says public comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, calling the Sept. 11 attacks retribution for U.S. policy and blaming the U.S. government for the spread of AIDS would no doubt be a factor in some voters minds.

But he said he would leave it to pollsters to analyze the extent of the impact.

“We’ve had a rough couple of weeks. I won’t deny that,” Obama told reporters. “I don’t think that what happened with Rev. Wright was helpful,” said the Illinois senator who forcefully denounced the minister’s rhetoric earlier this week.

The Wright flap is something that voters will “factor into the mix. How it plays itself out I can’t tell,” he said.

Obama has been honing his message on the economy and emphasizing a folksier, more personal campaigning style as he courts voters ahead of Tuesday’s contests in Indiana and North Carolina.

“What I don’t spend a lot of time doing is obsessing about what ifs and should’ve beens. We’ll see what happens on Tuesday and then we’re going to keep on going to the next contests.”

The Illinois senator is vying with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and the right to run against Republican Sen. John McCain in the November election.

He has been trying especially hard lately to court working class voters who have backed Clinton more heavily in recent contests in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In addition to the Wright controversy, Obama was hit by criticism from Clinton and McCain last month who seized on his comments about “bitter” small-town” voters to label him an elitist.

“I do think that one of the ironies of the last two or three weeks was this idea that somehow Michelle and I were elitist, pointy-headed intellectual types,” Obama said. “We didn’t recognize the caricature I think that has being painted of us over the last couple of weeks and we want to make sure that that’s pushed aside.” 
     
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Photo credit: Reuters/Frank Polich (Obama greets Indiana supporters on Thursday)