For Barack Obama, life was so much better as an underdog.
The Illinois senator desperately wants to close down the race for the Democratic presidential nomination with wins here in North Carolina and in Indiana next week. But he is weary, and he is getting only hurt from his friends.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Mr. Obama's pastor, defiantly confronted his tormentors in the media at a speech Monday before the National Press Club in Washington, where he condemned his critics as attacking, not him, but his faith.
"It is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright, it's an attack on the black church," he declared.
"I come from a religious tradition where we shout in the sanctuary and march on the picket line," he said. "I come from a religious tradition where we give God the glory and the Devil the blues. The black religious tradition is different. We do it a different way."
Mr. Obama's pastor went on to say that he hoped the controversy surrounding his fiery sermons, in which he damned the United States for its legacy of racism and accused the U.S. government of using AIDS as a weapon against the black community, would spark a dialogue about the contribution of black liberation theology to American society.
But Mr. Obama doesn't need a new debate over the black church. He needs Mr. Wright to go away, far away, to some place without phone service, and stay there until after the general election.
"Some of the comments that Reverend Wright has made offend me and I understand why they have offended the American people," he told reporters at a media availability Monday. But "he's obviously free to speak his mind."
Mr. Wright spoke on Sunday, as well, at a gathering hosted by the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit chapter, described Mr. Wright as "the hottest brother in America right now."
But Mr. Obama surely deserves that title, except that he is trying to portray himself as much more than a brother. For those attracted to his cause he offers a new hope: to reconcile America's racial divisions and galvanize the young into finally engaging in the political life of the nation.
But the energy of the Obama campaign is beginning to flag, after 15 months of endless campaigning. Reporters who have been travelling with the Obama campaign say that staff workers are visibly weary, and Mr. Obama himself has delivered a couple of flat performances at recent events.
He likes to say that "there were babies who were born and who are walking and talking now since I started" this race.
He used the line Monday before a packed auditorium of 5,000 wildly enthusiastic supporters at Trask Coliseum, at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
It was the same speech, with variations, that he has been using for months. And if Mr. Obama is tired, there was no sign of it here. The senator may have lost the last three primaries, but he has no plans of changing either the themes of his campaign or his approach to campaigning.
He decided to run for president, he told the crowd, because "I was convinced that the people no longer wanted to be divided. They didn't want to be divided by race, they didn't want to be divided by religion, they didn't want to be divided by region. They wanted to come together as the United States of America."
He dismissed those who predict that this chronic campaign will leave the Democratic Party in a shambles. "We will be united to make sure that a Democrat wins in November," he told them. "You can take that to the bank."
He admitted that his own campaign had become increasingly negative and aggressive in recent weeks.
"People start throwing elbows at you, you start to throw elbows back," he told them.
"None of us are immune from this kind of politics. But the problem is, it doesn't help you. Having politicians bicker back and forth doesn't help you."
His stump speech is heavily laden with swipes at pharmaceutical companies that obstruct health-care reform, at oil companies that stymie efforts to expand renewable energy, and he pointed out that Hillary Clinton takes money from them all.
