Ask the card-carrying socialists: Is Obama one of them?

[Ichingcarpenter]

But Wharton, co-chair of the Socialist Party USA, sees no reason to celebrate. He's seen people with bumper stickers and placards that call Obama a socialist, and he has a message for them: Obama isn't a socialist. He's not even a liberal.



"We didn't see a great victory with the election of Barack Obama," Wharton says, " and we certainly didn't see our agenda move from the streets to the White House."



Obama's opponents have long described him as a socialist. But what do actual socialists think about Obama? Not much, says Wharton.

"He's the president whose main goal is to protect the wealth of the richest 5 percent of Americans."

He and others say the assertion that Obama is a socialist is absurd.

"It makes no rational sense. It clearly means that people don't understand what socialism is."


Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits -- all reflect socialistic values, says Van Gosse, an associate professor of history at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who has researched socialist movements in the United States and Latin America.

The widely accepted notions of public education and Pell Grants for college students are socialistic in origin, Gosse says. They fit well with the socialistic premise that government should provide basic security from the cradle to the grave to all of its citizens, he says.

"We assert that education should not be left up to the private market -- where those who can pay, get it and those who can't, don't get it," Gosse says. "It's a common good and in that sense it is a socialistic institution even if the U.S. remains a capitalist nation."

Why socialists hate Obama's health care bill



They don't applaud the passage of the recent health care bill either. They wanted a national "single-payer" health insurance plan with a government option. The bill that Obama championed didn't have any of those features.

Wharton said the new health care bill only strengthens private health insurance companies. They get 32 million new customers and no incentive to change -- something a socialist wouldn't accept.

"Most of it was authored by the health care industry," Wharton says. "I call it the corporate restructuring of health care."


http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-14/politics/Obama.socialist_1_socialist-agenda-democratic-socialists-health-care-bill/2?_s=PM OLITICS


I'm gonna nomiate my own thread.....I agree with Wharton.

[TBF]

1. There is a lot of intentional confusion

in this country about what a socialist or communist looks like. Hint: it's not Barack Obama. He is smart, articulate, not embarrassing us in public, not raiding the treasury hand over fist like the last guy, and appears to at least care a little about workers and minorities (Lilly Ledbetter, repeal of DADT). Better than the Teabaggerati by a mile. But certainly NOT a socialist or communist.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. He's a little left of the status quo

which means shit.

[TBF]

4. Well,

the status quo is brainwashed by FAUX news, but yes I agree.

[Scruffy1]

11. As a fellow traveler I agree.

I consider Obama a corporatist to the core, but I can't help but like him because there is some human decency in him that is lacking in most of the sociopaths we elect. Besides, being intelligent, articulate and handsome doesn't hurt.
The truth is that all President's ride in the middle;spanking both sides. Change can not come from an oval office.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Notice the rebuttal in the article on government's job is for business

by the right wing?

I'm surprised CNN posted this article.

[TBF]

5. This sentence -

"The role of government is to provide a safe environment to conduct business, not to take from one and give to the other," says Quagliaroli, a financial planner who lives in Woodstock, Georgia.

That is the type of brainwashing I was referring to.

[MisterP]

6. the fact that both his supporters and opponents say he's a lefty doesn't mean that he IS a lefty,

but instead that party politics is so insulated, self-referential, shallow, and bankrupt that it can believe that he's a pinko because he's a Dem president following a Pub president

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. He's to the right of Kennedy, Johnson, Carter but

maybe on par with Clinton.

[Starry Messenger]

8. No.

But the right wing in this country have gone so free-market fascist crazypants that they make Nixon look like Tom Hayden.

I think the "socialist" accusations also come from a racist slant. I was reading an article a couple of weeks ago on how Hoover and the FBI got so out of control that they basically decided that all Black activism for Civil Rights were "communist fronts" and often persecuted them for being alien, criminal and "communist", even if they were really mainstream. That attitude lingers in the right-wing, I believe.

The remarks on Twitter about any frail association that the President might have with CPUSA or other socialist organizations is mined like they're looking for pieces of the True Cross. It's really awful, even though there is hardly anything wrong with having lefty friends or community partners. Other Black liberal politicians often get the same treatment.

[TBF]

10. Interesting perspective re the racism implicit in the allegations -

I don't think I quite appreciated how deep the divide is in this country. The Trayvon Martin case has really brought it to the forefront, and I suppose 150 years is really only a few generations. We've got a lot of work to do in this country.

[socialist_n_TN]

9. To this card carrying communist........

He ain't nowhere NEAR a socialist. So I agree with the premise of the article.