Back in April 2008, when the Illinois senator’s campaign for the Democratic nomination was well under way, black political scientist Adolph Reed described Obama as “a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him,” whose “fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal.” Nine years later, Reed’s analysis rings true with those of growing numbers of African American critics who have come to see the limits of Obama’s political style.
