The New York Times has written a massive expose of Barack Obama, showing the country what so many of us on the pro-Hillary side have seen for a while: Barack Obama is a power hungry fair-weather friend who has been pursuing the White House for most of his life. Further, his centrist stance is, ironically, highly Clintonian — such irony being lost on Obamazoids, of course, who condemn the Clintons’ Third Way centrism.
[Obama] moved from his leftist Hyde Park base to more centrist circles; he forged early alliances with the good-government reform crowd only to be embraced later by the city’s all-powerful Democratic bosses; he railed against pork-barrel politics but engaged in it when needed; and he empathized with the views of his Palestinian friends before adroitly courting the city’s politically potent Jewish community.
To broaden his appeal to African-Americans, Mr. Obama had to assiduously court older black leaders entrenched in Chicago’s ward politics while selling himself as a young, multicultural bridge to the wider political world…
“He has a pattern of forming relationships with various communities and as he takes his next step up, kind of distancing himself from them and then positioning himself as the bridge,” said Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American author and co-founder of the online publication Electronic Intifada, who became acquainted with Mr. Obama in Chicago.
Even moments that supporters see as his boldest are tempered by his political caution. The forceful speech he delivered in 2002 against the impending Iraq invasion — a speech that has helped define him nationally — was threaded with an unusual mantra for a 1960s-style antiwar rally: “I’m not opposed to all wars.” It was a refrain Mr. Obama had tested on his political advisers, and it was a display of his ability to speak to the audience before him while keeping in mind the broader audience to come…
For more on Obama’s sordid glide to power, see “Obama knows his way around a ballot” and “Obama in Senate: Star Power, Minor Role” from the Chicago Trib and NYT, respectively.
Kudos to the Times for doing some journalism, for once.
(Via Jeralyn)
