"explanations for actions will fail to reflect the actual causes of those actions to the extent that those actions are the results of nonconscious processes."

Yes, he says that. And then he says:

listening to people’s explanations of their actions is interesting—and in the case of politicians, entertaining—but often a waste of time.

thus extending the anecdote of snakes in the grass to a parable that includes politicans' speeches.

It seems to me that in common usage, when a person says "I thought there was a snake" they mean something closer to, "I thought I consciously apprehended the presence of a snake," than, "some low-level perceptual processing pattern-matched 'snake' and sent motor signals for retreating before I had a chance to consider the matter consciously."

Or perhaps they mean "I heard a sound that might be a snake". As long as we're just making up scenarios, we can slant them to favour any view of consciousness we want. This doesn't even rise to the level of anecdote.