Academic

Academic and activist Cornel West blasts Barack Obama, just days after the first black president's reelection.

“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 said of Obama.

He then said Obama is to the right of former Republican president Richard Nixon. “Oh, that’s what we have,” West said after the host of the show wondered whether the activist was being too harsh. “Richard Nixon is to the left of him on health care. Richard Nixon’s to the left of him on guaranteed income.” 

West also directed fire at the American political process.

“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,” West told Democracy Now, according to Mediaite. “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.”