“Don’t be fooled by the numbers” e-mailed a lawyer friend who practices in a hamlet in the mountains of North Carolina. He was talking about Obama’s then-13-point edge in some polls. “Of course folks are going to tell an outsider that race is not a problem but it’s different when they actually vote.”

This pre-Rev. Wright observation by an Obama supporter has a new twist now. The flap-mouthed preacher has become the Poster Boy for white voters looking for a reason to vote against Obama that doesn’t sound as bad as being against a presidential candidate simply because he’s black. Journalists devotedly report their interviews with white male blue-collar workers in North Carolina who now feel free to say they are “troubled” by Wright– not having to say anything about Obama per se.

Most of them probably would have never voted for Obama anyway, but the Wright media avalanche has buried the pitch Obama hoped to make on serious issues. Even some Obama fans murmur that his interview answers are “flat.” What was once seen as the admirable cool of a man comfortable in his own skin now looks like slow-motion reactions and comments.

Obama has not learned to be a true politician–able to form splashy sound bites, or to adopt whatever works for the moment. The latest such example is Clinton’s adoption of McCain’s summer gas-tax holiday. She hits hard in simple sentences aimed at showing compassion for the white blue-collar cadres who are her base (at least until — or if — she runs against McCain). Like all the economists and experts, Obama says it won’t work and that it is a “gimmick” — but by the time he explains it viewers have yawned their way into flipping to another constant-cable moment: the polygamist sect in Texas, where the women dress like those on the adjacent channel showing old westerns.

Jon Stewart, in a much-needed reality check, knocked the Catholic church-going commentators who blast Obama for not leaving his church at the first instance of an “unAmerican” lava-flow from the Wright. Pedophile priests scandals and cover-ups from on high have not caused those commentators to abandon their church, noted Stewart. But there’s been almost no harsh appraisal of McCain’s happpy, huggy acceptance of Rev. John Hagee’s support. In case you haven’t heard of him lately (and why should you if the media doesn’t mention it?) this is the man who attacks Catholics, feminists, gays, Arabs and anyone who is loathe to bomb Iran.

Obama’s momentum is slipping and he may never be able to slug it out with Clinton, who seems to love her Rocky image. Obama’s turn-the-other-cheek mode may no longer be a good strategy, unless he can learn to make his own case in bumper-sticker soundbites and slogans — and thus no longer be the politician of change.

If he loses or just squeaks by in North Carolina look for a long hot summer among battling Democrats who once saw the White House as a sure win, no matter who they ran.