Obamamania Pt 4

A remarkable piece by respected veteran black political scientist and left wing activist Prof Adolf Reed Jr in The Progressive, which is hardly my normal reading, takes issue with the vacuous nature of Obamania and, from a leftist perspective, the shammery and hollowness of his aspirations. Excerpt:

I’ve never been an Obama supporter. I’ve known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal.

Read the whole thing.

This is an extraordinarily prescient piece that, coming as it does from someone who is a black leftist, all the more likely to be true. It is fascinating that both right wing commentators and Mr. Reed seem to say almost the same things about the Obamessiah and therefore they are both right or both wrong. I happen to believe the former more likely.