Did Shelby Steele oppose Clarence Thomas?

He was certainly less qualified than Sonia Sotomayor, yet Poppy Bush picked him solely on his skin color. Steele doesn’t even mention that while eviscerating Obama for tapping Sotomayor. Rather, Steele sounds like he actually is riffing on Thomas:

I have called Mr. Obama a bound man because he cannot win white support without bargaining and he cannot maintain minority support without playing the very identity politics that injure him with whites. The latter form of politics is grounded in being what I call a challenger -- i.e., someone who presumes that whites are racist until they prove otherwise by granting preferences of some kind to minorities.

With insight like that, who needs reality, eh?

(Of course, this is the same Steele who wrote a political handicapping book in 2007 predicting Obama couldn’t win.)