Cornel West Calls Obama a ‘Rockefeller Republican in Blackface’

Union Theological Seminary professor and radio talk show host Dr. Cornel West, is at it again. He, along with his radio co-host Tavis Smiley, has been one of President Obama’s most vocal African-American critics, and he recently took the president to task about the U.S.’s imperialistic foreign policy, and the Obama administration’s apparent lack of concern about poverty on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now show.

At one point he said:

I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion–poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. … So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.

West then goes on to say that political commentators Melissa Harris-Perry, Michael Eric Dyson, Rev. Al Sharpton have sold out:

I love Brother Mike Dyson… but we’re living in a society where everybody is up for sale. Everything is up for sale. And he and Brother Sharpton and Sister Melissa and others, they have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage. And we invite them back to the black prophetic tradition after Obama leaves. But at the moment, they want insider access, and they want to tell those kind of lies. They want to turn their back to poor and working people.

West claims Obama is not a “progressive” president because he has not taken risks and has played it safe through out his tenure.