Not satisfied with his already low opinion among Democrats who blame him for costing them the election in 2000, Ralph Nader is apparently shooting for a special level of hostility:

“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” Nader said. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”

. . . “He wants to show that he is not a threatening . . . another politically threatening African-American politician,” Nader said. “He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.”

Barack Obama responded to Nader’s remarks politely, but as the Sun-Times notes, sounded “almost sorry for Nader”:

“Ralph Nader hadn’t been paying attention to my speeches, because all the issues that he talked about — whether it be predatory lending, the housing foreclosure crisis . . . I’ve devoted multiple speeches,” Obama said. “Ralph Nader is trying to get attention. I think it’s a shame because if you look at his legacy in terms of consumer protections, its an extraordinary one.”

[...] ”He’s someone . . . whose campaign hasn’t gotten any traction. So what better way to get some traction than to make an inflammatory statement like the one that he made? It is what it is.”

Obama’s campaign staff was a bit harsher:

“It reminds me of that old saying,” said communications director Robert Gibbs, “which I’ll paraphrase: ‘Better to be thought not-so-smart than to open your mouth and remove all doubt,’ which is apparently what Ralph Nader did in Denver yesterday or the day before.Obviously Ralph Nader hasn’t spent a lot of time looking at the entire career of Barack Obama[...]So, I think Ralph Nader is — besides those comments being reprehensible and basically delusional, I don’t think he’s spent a lot of time looking at the record of Barack Obama.” 

Obama had said last week that he expected Republicans to use the race card against him in the general election:

“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Perhaps ironically, it was Ralph Nader — not the Republicans — who proved Obama’s prediction right. 

ALSO: In the same vein, Obama supporter and Kansas governor Kathleen Sibelius made a similar prediction about Republicans on Wednesday, saying they would undertake “a major effort to try and frighten people about [Obama]” because of his race. 

Sibelius went even further by claiming that while Republicans wouldn’t “go directly at the race issue,” their criticism about Obama’s lack of experience and liberal policies were actually all “code words” that would seek to play on the “underlying theme” of Obama’s race.