The PDF won't load for me, but I'm guessing it's supposed to be a demonstration that an "in it for the grift" candidate did in fact win immediately prior to the one you're thinking of.
> Help me understand the intended relevance of that passage.
My intent seems straightforward to me, whether you agree with it or not. You do know that there has only been one black president? Moreover.
> > the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices;
Maybe I’m misremembering here, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen comments adjacent to this by the same author (Reed) which commented on how Obama was claiming that he was from the grassroots. Then either Reed himself or other people from the local grassroots would ask, who is this? Hence: foundation-hatched black communitarian voice; an astroturf.
Perhaps that wasn’t what Obama did. (Again: I might be misremembering and this quote is from 1996 so there are a lot of [dead] links around.) Assertive people just showing up and claiming to be the voice of X without having done any work is certainly a kind of grift.
But it’s not like any of this would make a difference to you anyway. Because when you indirectly make claims like “Trump is the first grifter president” then what a “grift” is to one person apparently is just “savvy and politically astute” to the people you find respectable. (I’m alluding here to the viewpoint that politician is the most dishonorable kind of profession that wears a suite.)
> but it seems ahistorical
Again, a quote from 1996. It was printed and all that so apparently the historicity seems fine enough (that it happened).
