Is Obama a Socialist? The Answer Doesn’t Matter
New America Media, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson Posted: Aug 11, 2009
In a feature interview in Esquire in July, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was asked point blank, “Is Obama a socialist?” Bush’s short answer: “I don’t know.” His answer was as duplicitous as it was cryptic. Bush and the GOP attack hounds have worked night and day to tar Obama as a stealth red president out to socialize medicine, snatch wealth from the rich and middle class, impose a Joe Stalin-style big and repressive government on America, and reorder capitalism. This is cunning, calculated and a Kool Aid delusion ploy. But it’s also working.
Right-wing bloggers, chatters, and talk radio gabbers pile tons of anti-Obama slurs and slams on websites, blogs and in responses to articles. In an August US News and World Report online poll nearly 90 percent of the respondents said that Obama’s policies are socialist. There are more than 2 million references (and climbing), quotes, quips, comments, and notations on Obama as a socialist on Google. And there are more than a quarter million references and comments on Google to a new poster that depicts Obama as the Joker from Batman. Packs of blog respondents bragged that they were plastering up posters all over the joint.
The sheer mass of anti-Obama slanders from the right, the fringe and the GOP hounds has forced much of the mainstream media and respected commentators, analysts and bloggers who should know better to spend time and space arguing the claim and refuting it. This just gives back door credence to the silly charge.
The irony is that candidate Obama also gave backdoor dignity to it last October during a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Obama mocked the charge in a blast at McCain for strongly hinting there was a red taint to Obama’s agenda. Obama laughed it off saying, ‘what’s next calling me a communist?’ Unfortunately, there are more than a few who have happily said just that about him, too.
Even if he never pursed his lips and dignified the idiocy, and the GOP had played it on the up-and-up and stuck to the standard attack on Democrats as pro-tax and spend, big government, and dovish on defense, Obama still would be branded a socialist. It’s a juicy term that touches a raw nerve with most Americans who are in a fog on what socialism is and how it works as a system. To many, a socialist is someone who is pro-union, for increased government spending on health and education programs, and for civil liberties and especially civil rights. During the 1960’s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was routinely smeared as a communist and socialist.
But it’s the mildest criticism of big business and the wealthy that ensure slapping on the socialist tag. America’s economic sacred cow is that laissez faire wealth is tantamount to a divine right of kings, and any attempt to touch it is heresy. Politicians know that to be seen as an advocate for tax and income fairness invites being plastered with the socialist tag.
GOP presidents and presidential candidates ritually play the tax and spend card to brand their Democratic rivals as dangerous to middle-class wage earners. This stokes fear that the rich will be hammered and the poor will be the beneficiaries under the Democrats’ supposed taxing and spending. The wealth-taking scare has worked in the past precisely because wealth and income iniquities are so great, and the notion that there's nothing wrong with those iniquities is so deeply entrenched in tax policy, philosophy and politics.
Any talk of putting more wealth into the hands of the non-wealthy by way of tax cuts, a Social Security tax increase on upper income wage earners, capital gain increases, and closing tax shelter loopholes is plainly regarded as wealth redistribution downward. During the campaign, McCain grabbed at the formula that GOP contenders traditionally use and hit Obama with it.
It has worked to the extent that it has because millions of middle- and working-class wage earners dream that they will be rich someday and are horrified that they can have their imagined wealth downsized by a tax-and-spend Democrat or worse a Democrat who's branded as socialist-leaning.
Obama cringed in horror at the absurd notion that he is a wait-in-the wings Marxist. But tossing the damaging political label at him is more than just a last desperate gasp effort by the GOP attack hounds to get an edge on Obama. It taps into the deeply held belief and even fear that Obama can and will actually mug the rich and, by extension, those who fantasize about being rich. The question, “Is Obama a Socialist” is silly. Yet, to even ask it creates just enough doubt. And that suits the GOP.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com.
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User Comments
joey on Aug 19, 2009 at 03:53:13 said:
To shukura: Hate to break it to you, but those evil rich people provide jobs, those evil rich people give the most to charity (obama is cutting that for the rich to), evil rich people achieved the American dream and are taxed for it? Those evil rich people are what makes our economy drive with small business owners who have been successful. Why can't we all have a flat tax and cut government spending?
We are suppose to health provide coverage for illegal aliens too? You have got to be kidding me.
Here's my idea of Health Reform:
1.We cut medicare and medicaid, it will bankrupt us as a nation.
2. The government regulates and makes sure if you are insured you must be covered for all expenses by the PRIVATE insurance companies, not the government.
3. It is your choice to have it or not, its your risk if you don't.
4. The plan is pro-free market rather than socialized medicine.
5. We cut spending for care for illegal aliens making our premiums go down.
Pretty simple plan and effective.
Wei on Aug 14, 2009 at 09:18:07 said:
You know what I think? I think the last time "big guv'mint" broke down people's doors and took private property away from private citizens was the abolition of slavery in America. This is the REAL psychological root of this irrational fear of the specter of "socialism".
What about big corporate... when they (and their police) broke down my neighbor's doors and took their homes/cars? The last time Shell Oil and their company gunships (yes, gunships owned by Royal Dutch Oil) killed entire villages in Nigeria? Fascism? Fascism by definition is the collusion between government and industry.
I have just returned from several years working in Asia and Europe (for an American corporation). And the contrast I felt upon my return home was unexpectedly and painfully clear: the "Know-Nothings" is not just an American political phenomenon 200 years ago... it's alive and well today. We are PROUD of our ignorance. We want to expend minimal amount of effort to understand other people and ourselves. And we want news and facts to be pre-packaged and fed to us. And we are the laughing stock of the world.
allen the true on Aug 14, 2009 at 06:35:37 said:
for the truth go to ALEX JONES.com and search THE OBAMA DECEPTION
allen the true on Aug 14, 2009 at 06:34:14 said:
for the truth go to ALEX JONES.com and search THE OBAMA DECEPTION
shukura on Aug 11, 2009 at 20:30:29 said:
Honey, we are in an energy crisis but you just don't realize it. If we don't do something about our energy problems we are headed back into the dark ages with little or no electricity, oil, gas, etc. The information is out there for you to read if you just find it. The condition of the poor is directly related to the greed of the wealthy...that has been proven time and time again. The poor control nothing. The rich control all. What's wrong with everyone having a chance at adequate healthcare? Why are you so against it? Obama ran on reforming all of these things and won, now the losers are having tantrums all over crying and wining.
Jim Cyr on Aug 11, 2009 at 19:09:34 said:
Does it matter if Obama is socialist? Well, only if we ever hope to regain the economic power we used to have.
Obama has a Czar who is appointed to regulate salaries. That seems socialist to me.
He has LONG advocated for a single payer healthcare system. That IS socialist to me.
The government now controls and runs GM. That seems kind of socialist to me.
Obama has constantly campaigned on blaming the condition of the poor on the success of the rich. This is right out of the Communist Manifesto, read it.
Mor times than not, Obama's big solution is to have government control more industry. Before his term is over, we are headed to an energy crisis, his answer will be to have government take over energy as well. Bet on it.
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Well, if it walks like a socialist, and talks like a socialist.....
Craig Hardy on Aug 11, 2009 at 08:53:11 said:
The only people who may not know about socialism is the vast majority of Obama voters. We can thank the ObamaMedia who chose to ignore Obama's past and have long since given up on objective reporting.
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