Barack Obama is smarter than George W. Bush; in more emotional control than John McCain and a better speaker than both of them put together. Black people have reason to be proud that one of their own has reached the White House. But progressives are kidding themselves if they think Obama is going to make major changes in our direction once he gets there. And expecting that he will because he is black or because he is a Democrat is just so much narrow and useless “Identity Politics” again.

Progressives: Here are some things you should read so that you don’t get too disappointed by an Obama administration, or get too lackadaisical in your activism just because a Democrat or an African-American is in the White House.

Larry Pinkney, “An Obama Presidency: More of the same only worse,” originally in The Black Commentator on Nov. 5, 2008, available at the Information Clearing House.

“If the masses of people in this nation knew or had known the pertinent facts pertaining to the war mongering “we can fight the war better,” pro-apartheid Zionist, corporate Wall Street-backed, slippery tongued Barack Obama, it is doubtful they would have been so thoroughly bamboozled and hoodwinked to their own detriment and that of the world. Wall Street and the corporate media, however, have, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, engaged in a relentless, ruthless, and absolutely unprecedented campaign of corporate branding and marketing on behalf of Barack Obama, with the peoples of the United States as their targets.”

Chris Hedges, “Only Nader is right on the issues,” Originally published Nov. 3, 2008 in Truthdig, available at Information Clearing House.

“Sen. Barack Obama’s vote to renew the Patriot Act, his votes to continue to fund the Iraq war, his backing of the FISA Reform Act, his craven courting of the Israeli lobby, his support of the death penalty, his refusal to champion universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans, his call to increase troop levels and expand the war in Afghanistan, his failure to call for a reduction in the bloated and wasteful defense spending and his lobbying for the huge taxpayer swindle known as the bailout are repugnant to most of us on the left.”

Ralph Nader,”An Open Letter to Barack Obama: Between hope and reality,” Information Clearing House, Nov. 3, 2008.

“Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?”

John Pilger, “In the great tradition, Obama is a Hawk.” JohnPilger.com, June 12, 2008.

“Speaking to the expatriate Cuban community -- which over the years has faithfully produced terrorists, assassins and drug runners for US administrations -- Obama promised to continue a 47-year crippling embargo on Cuba that has been declared illegal by the UN year after year.

“Again, Obama went further than Bush. He said the United States had “lost Latin America.” He described the democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as a “vacuum” to be filled. He raised the nonsense of Iranian influence in Latin America, and he endorsed Colombia’s “right to strike terrorists who seek safe-havens across its borders.” Translated, this means the “right” of a regime, whose president and leading politicians are linked to death squads, to invade its neighbours on behalf of Washington. He also endorsed the so-called Merida Initiative, which Amnesty International and others have condemned as the US bringing the “Colombian solution” to Mexico. He did not stop there. ‘We must press further south as well,’ he said. Not even Bush has said that.”