Nader on Obama II.

Ralph Nader on Wednesday defended the comments he had made to a newspaper suggesting that Senator Barack Obama has not devoted enough time to poverty in inner cities and rural areas and ''wants to talk white.'' In an interview with The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Mr. Nader, who is running as an independent for president, said of Mr. Obama: ''There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. 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?'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]