What's Truth Got to Do With It?

Barack Obama got brownie points in the corporate media, and on corporate friendly NPR, for denouncing Jeremiah Wright, though most of what Wright said was, well, right. Now, these pro-regime propagandists have joined leading Democrats to go after their favorite target, Ralph Nader. His purported crime: besmirching his “legacy” by bad mouthing Obama – to get “attention.” His real offense was that, like Wright, he dared speak the truth. Reduced to its core, what Nader said was that Obama has had as little to say about institutional racism as any other Democrat (excluding the handful of genuine progressives still in the party), and that his appeal to liberals depends partly on “white guilt.” Nader pointed out the obvious: that Obama and his supporters have used Obama’s race to immunize themselves from criticism on issues that bear on racism – the better to assuage white voters’ fears. Wright went a little over the top when he accused the feds of spreading HIV/AIDS in black communities, though, given the historical record, the charge isn’t all that outlandish. In any case, most of what he was denounced for saying was irrefutable. Nader’s remarks were entirely dead on. No matter, though; truth has nothing to do with it. What matters, liberals fantasize, is that once Obama dispatches John McCain – no matter how many “compromises” and flip flops he makes along the way – he’ll somehow emerge as better than he’s so far been. It’s unlikely, but not impossible. However, there’s no chance that anything like this will come to pass unless voters to Obama’s left (that would be almost all Democratic voters) put the pressure on him now – and increase it with each rightward turn the lesser evil candidate takes. Even then, the prospects are poor: what with Clinton and Obama “bundlers” paying the piper and expecting their due.