Shelby Steele, a conservative black intellectual, argues that race, is the only thing that separates Obama from hordes of party-line liberal Democrats. “If he were not black, I don’t know if we’d know his name,” Steele said at a lecture back in January.
Steele said that many white voters chose Obama as a way to “finally document for the world that they are not racist,” an impulse that blinds them to Obama’s weaknesses.
