Sharpton Gets After Nader for Getting After Obama

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Sharpton Gets After Nader for Getting After Obama

Posted June 26, 2008 | 11:32 AM (EST)

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/sharpton-gets-after-nader_b_109371.html

Reverend Al Sharpton recently took the rare step of writing an open letter to independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. He raked Nader over the coals for blasting Obama for speaking differently to blacks and whites; presumably that means Obama uses different cadences, word usage, and rhetoric when he speaks to each group. Whether Ralph really said or believes that Obama is a racial panderer is subject to debate especially since Obama from day one of his campaign has said and done everything possible to run a race neutral, all inclusive campaign, and to pose himself as the candidate who addresses the problems and needs of the broad spectrum of Americans. It could be no other way. Even the slightest hint from Obama that he played race and his candidacy would have sunk faster than an ocean liner's anchor.

While Sharpton's Nader indictment is harsh there is much more that Sharpton could have gotten after Nader about in his Obama bash than a tangential racial reference. Nader recently sent out an email touting novelist Russell Banks' slam of Obama. Banks branded Obama a centrist Democrat who feeds the dream that he can magically make change on the Iraq War, the economy, the racial divide and the class divide. Nader's main gripe about Obama is that he's a Beltway politician who talks a good game but as other Washington insiders shills for corporations and panders on foreign policy matters. Nader's list of Obama's alleged political sins includes backing the Patriot Act, watering down tough environmental legislation, failing to back the censure of Bush on illegal wiretapping, reauthorization of Iraq war funds, and surrounding himself with Cold War Warriors such as Zbigniew Brezhenski as foreign policy advisors and a legion of corporate flaks as key economic advisors. Nader was especially incensed that Obama pandered to AIPAC when he made a hardnosed, all out defense of Israel that ignored bipartisan peace proposals that insured Palestinian rights.

But these are mostly straw man arguments. None but the most rabid, blind eye Obama backers truly believe that he is the second coming of, well Ralph Nader when it comes to challenging corporate power and the political establishment. Obama is, as Nader charged, a consummate Democratic Party and Senate insider. If he wasn't he wouldn't have gotten as far as he has in the presidential derby. That's in sharp contrast to Nader who is the consummate party outsider who since his splash in 2000 has been tossed further to the political margins. To hold Obama to the standard of a fringe political maverick is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst. Obama has to be judged by the political standards of a mainstream Democrat.

The type of change he advocates can only be made within the tight and narrow constraints of Washington politics. By necessity, this entails compromise, negotiation, stoking party and Capital Hill loyalties and staying in tune with the centrist voter mood. A Washington insider such as Obama can't be called a sell-out to principles when the principles that drive him and other Washington insiders are pragmatic, consensus politics. That's the only way that Obama or any other mainstream Democrat or Republican can win a major election. As the great foe of corporations and Beltway politicians, Nader has spent decades and three presidential campaigns railing against political cronyism, two party dominance, corporate greed and malfeasance, war mongering and profiteering.

[tridim]

1. Nader and Pat Buchannan have morphed into the same person. nt

[woodsprite]

2. Hubby and I were laughing at cartoon the other day (Nader was in it)

in our paper, and our daughter came in. We asked her if she knew who Nader was. She surprised us when she said yes - He's the guy who always runs for President, never wins, but skews results just enough to tip the cart.

She said they were discussing it in her US History class :)