He's "vehemently" disagreed; he's "categorically" denounced; he's "strongly" condemned. Barack Obama has said nearly all he can to distance himself from his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, besides devoting an entire speech to it. And he's going to do that, too. But this might be the time when words, just words, fail Obama.

Today reasonable people are wondering: What was Obama thinking? Wright represents the very fever swamps Obama has tried so hard to avoid during his candidacy: The virulent leftism; the race-based victimization; the conspiracy-addled paranoia. And the ugly, ugly anti-Americanism. It should come as no surprise to the campaign that a new Rasmussen poll found that 56% of respondents, and 44% of Democrats, said that Wright's comments make them less likely to vote for Obama. Which means that a candidate who was on the verge of achieving the impossible dream is suddenly facing not just defeat, but a legacy whose lasting image could very well be pastor Wright mimicking Bill Clinton's sexual gyrations.

So to avoid that legacy, Obama will give a speech -- the last recourse of an embattled politician -- and here he has been strangely fortunate. Much to his credit and success, Obama has rejected running a campaign based on race. That doesn't mean, however, that Obama's candidacy is non-racial. How can it be when he has a chance to make history as the first black president?

But too often Obama has given in to the temptation of identity politics by freely accepting the support of those who do argue his cause based on race. In the December issue of The Atlantic, to pluck just one example, Andrew Sullivan wrote: "What does [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face." Back in mid-February, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Obama's national co-chair, tried to sway one super-delegate by asking, "Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House?"

These are effective arguments. Many Americans want to see Obama as the candidate to move them beyond the racial tensions of the past, and in that they see "first and foremost" his face. But because they are effective arguments, Obama's critics have attacked them, as opponents tend to do in politics. Again, Obama has fallen into the identity politics trap here by denouncing those critics as racists. This too in an effective argument, even as it has positioned the campaign as the arbiter of all things racial.

But fate must have a sense of irony because it waited until last week to drop the Wright bombshell. Let's remember that the week began with yet another Clinton ally getting caught playing the race card. It ended with Obama getting caught having a bigot on his campaign. In between, accusations of racism and gender-bias flew back and forth, as worried Democratic elites watched identity politics ravish their party.

So the emergence of Wright at just this moment has stripped the Obama campaign of effectively countering perceived racial slights from his opponents. After all, what were Geraldine Ferraro's comments compared to Wright's years of odious sermonizing? Although Clinton has so far not used Wright against Obama, her forbearance might not last, nor should it, were the Obama campaign to lob yet another racial grenade. With Clinton's finger on the MAD button, Obama will be much more careful in waving the bloody shirt of race.

We can extend this into the general election as well. It wasn't so long ago that Howard Dean bristled that the Republican all-white field "looks like the 1950s and talks like the 1850s." Indeed, Democrats have been anticipating a general election with either Obama or Clinton in which they could finally cast the GOP as the party of white men they constantly claim it is. Things are different now. Could Clinton supporters effectively use the gender card against McCain, after all we know about their attacks on Obama? Could Obama supporters use the race card against McCain, after what we know about Wright? Perhaps, but McCain could easily turn it back on either of them.

If Obama appreciates this, then today's speech could return him to the moral high ground. He has a chance to denounce identity politics of any kind by first admitting that he felt the temptation to engage in it. He could say that he has freely accepted others' use of his race as a qualifying characteristic of his campaign, but no longer. All this has done, he could say, is give credence to the argument that his candidacy is about his race. In short, he could say that not only is identity politics terrible for the Democratic Party, it's terrible for the country.

Even if he does say all this, Obama still might not escape the Wright trap. But it would be a nice change.