If You're Disillusioned with Obama, You Don't Understand How He Won

The distance between the aspirations he raised and his record a year on is the distinction between the electoral and the political

by Gary Younge

You've got to feel sorry for the Democratic ­Senate leader, Harry Reid. In 1995, when it seemed Colin Powell might run for president, Powell explained his ­appeal to white voters thus: "I speak reasonably well, like a white person", and, visually, "I ain't that black".

More than a decade later, Reid said almost the same thing about Barack Obama, arguing that the presidential candidate owed his success in part to his "light-skinned" appearance and the fact that he spoke "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one".