I'd have to disagree. From everything that I've read about Obama's mother, she was darned close to or possibly just as much of a leftist as Davis was. While her father may have influenced her political leanings, I'd say that she was certainly capable of doing that all on her own.
"Don't tell your grandmother," he would say with a wink, and we'd walk past hard-faced, soft-bodied streetwalkers into a small, dark bar with a jukebox and a couple of pool tables. Nobody seemed to mind that Gramps was the only white man in the place, or that I was the only eleven- or twelve-year-old. Some of the men leaning across the bar would wave at us, and the bartender, a big, light-skinned woman with bare, fleshy arms, would bring a Scotch for gramps and a Coke for me. If nobody else was playing at the tables, Gramps would spot me a few balls and teach me the game, but usually I would sit at the bar, my legs dangling from the high stool, blowing bubbles into my drink and looking at the pornographic art on the walls-the phosphorescent women on animal skins, the Disney characters in compromising positions....