Stay Classy, Ralph Nader
It's going to take a while for Americans and pundits (often the same thing!) to adjust to a black president. There are cliches and turns of phrase and narratives that simply won't sound right if applied to a black man. Ralph Nader's getting a head start on this.
During the campaign, Nader suggested that Obama was "acting white" by not barnstorming the country and talking about poverty or something. But the irony is that Nader's one of the sorriest practitioners of ethnic politics out there. "Sorry" in the sense that it never works. He's run for president four times and each time chosen a hilariously unqualified ethnic minority running mate: Winona LaDuke (American Indian), LaDuke again, Peter Camejo (Hispanic) and Matt Gonzalez (Hispanic).
Nader's long nightmare is over, in a sense, because I don't think liberals can stay mad at him when they've won the presidency in a rout and he couldn't stop them. But his race obsession looks even worse compared to Bob Barr. "It just illustrates the tremendous demographic changes, generational changes in this country," Barr told me last night, discussing Obama's win. "This really is a very different country, in some ways much better country, than it was several years ago."
