It’s hard to imagine how someone who listened to this speech, and who had followed at all the controversy of the last few days, could still view Obama as somehow transcending politics. It’s a speech, and a controversy, that are predictable and dispiriting — that with minor changes one could imagine attributing to Hillary or Jesse. This is not damning, but the problem for Obama is that he had promised more, and now that’s clearly not what he’s going to deliver.