Right now, Hillary Clinton must be wondering how many more lucky breaks she can get to keep her hanging on in this presidential race that she’s obviously been losing to Barack Obama. Once thought a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination and eventual coronation as commandress-in-chief, she’s had to suffer the disappointment and indignity of a little-known senator who, thanks to his race (according to Hillary supporter Geraldine Ferraro), came out of nowhere to become the fairy tale frontrunner.

And then, just in the nick of time perhaps, almost like manna from heaven, along came the revelations of, and about, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago.

By now, everyone who doesn’t live in a cave has heard a sampling of some of Rev. Wright’s Sunday morning fireworks and it’s none too pretty. Not that it isn’t anything we haven’t heard before from many of our depraved enemies around the world and from our own homegrown far-left malcontents. But who thought this kind of stuff was being preached in American churches that call themselves Christian? Imagine someone shouting the following at the top of his lungs in a house of worship:

“God damn America, that’s in the bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

Whew! That’s the kind of language and message that would normally make your average parishioner — not to mention your average messianic presidential candidate who has promised to unify all Americans — cringe, but at the Trinity United Church of Christ it frequently has members of the flock dancing in the aisles, bobbing their heads in agreement and shouting amen to the rafters.

And it’s not like anybody was ashamed of it or trying to keep the lid on it. This all came out because, lo and behold, the mainstream media finally decided to take a look at some of Rev. Wright’s sermons which are actually available for sale by the church. I’ve heard of church bake sales, but church hate sales?

If nothing else, this prized collection of Rev. Wright’s greatest hits sounds like the perfect gift for that finicky, churchgoing and America-hating family member who is always so gosh darn hard to shop for. Here’s another sample of the spiritual riches to be mined from its contents:

“Jesus was a poor black man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture that was controlled by rich white people. The Romans were rich. The Romans were Italians, which means they were European, which means they were white–and the Romans ran everything in Jesus’ country. It just came to me . . . why so many folk are hatin’ on Barack Obama. He doesn’t fit the model!”

Well, sure, it all makes sense now. Thanks for clearing that up for us, Reverend.

By the way, did you know that Jesus was black? Gee, that’s funny. I thought Jesus was a Jew, which means a person of Hebrew descent, which means a person who falls under the broad classification of the Caucasoid race, which means not a sub-Saharan Negroid, which definitely means not black. But it’s all right there in the good reverend’s sermon, so apparently we’ve all been misled for a couple of millennia.

Other spiritual morsels imparted by Rev. Wright include referring to America as the US of KKK A, claiming that the U.S. created the AIDS virus to kill blacks and saying that the U.S. has supported state-sponsored terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans. I could go on, but you get the idea.

So, the implications for the Obama candidacy are rather obvious. As the old maxim goes, if you lie down with dogs you’re bound to come up with fleas. The question for Obama, then, is, how much of the hate speech of his “spiritual inspiration,” “mentor,” and “moral compass” does he agree with while incongruously running for office of unifier-in-chief?

In a post on the left-wing website, Huffington Post — appropriately enough and which, by the way, is absolutely crawling with people who would agree with every foul thing Rev. Wright has said about America — Obama assured everyone that in all his 20 years of church membership, he has never been in the pews at any of those particular times when such “inflammatory and appalling remarks” were made about “our great country.”

Even if you could believe that an amazing string of coincidences could occur throughout the course of 20 years such that Obama’s patriotic ears were never once exposed to Wright’s hateful preaching, can you also believe he was utterly clueless as to what his pastor was all about? That strains credulity beyond all reason. The guy married him, baptized his children and inspired the title of his book “The Audacity Of Hope.”

And what about Mrs. Obama? Did she miss all those hate-filled sermons as well? I have my doubts because they sure would go a long way towards explaining that lousy attitude of hers that kept her from being proud of her country right up until the time her husband became the Democratic frontrunner.

Obama has said that Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.” It’s the old “crazy uncle” excuse, but the problem with that is, while you can’t pick your relatives, you do pick your pastor. And if I had an uncle who, in my presence, said the things Rev. Wright has said about America, one of us would be leaving the premises.

What voters have to ask themselves is, do they want a couple occupying the White House, either one of whom see everything through a prism of racial victimhood and contempt for America’s past imperfections? No doubt, there is a not insignificant number of voters who have absolutely no problem with that. We can only hope it isn’t the majority because that would signal a decline in the American spirit too awful to contemplate.

Greg Strange provides conservative commentary with plenty of acerbic wit on the people, politics, events and absurdities of our time. See more at his website: http://www.greg-strange.com/.