This accounts for the fact that although the Democratic presidential candidate won his nomination by telling voters he opposed the war in Iraq, by the time he sewed up that nomination, he was appearing on the Bill O'Reilly show to praise the war in Iraq and endorse the Cheney-Bush “surge”. It explains why candidate Obama, after promising (but mostly only before labor audiences) to renegotiate NAFTA, walk a picket line and pass legislation that would make more unionization possible, president Obama pushed to extend “free trade” agreements everywhere, cracked down on federal workers, demonized teacher unions and more. It explains why Obama literally claims to walk in Martin Luther King's footsteps when it suits him --- on the campaign trail he declared himself “Joshua” to Dr. King's “Moses” --- but manages to ignore black unemployment and mass incarceration, the wave of foreclosures which are inordinately concentrated among nonwhite households, and maintains the US position as in King's words “...the number one purveyor of violence in the world today.”
-- Bruce Dixon, "Barack Obama VS Those Craaazy Republicans: Is He the Lesser Evil, or the More Effective Evil?" (Black Agenda Report).