Local communists, rarely tapped as campaign pundits, say Sen. Barack Obama and his policies stand far afield from any form of socialism they know.
John Bachtell, the Illinois organizer for Communist Party USA, sees attempts by Sen. John McCain's campaign to label Obama a socialist as both offensive to socialists and a desperate ploy to tap into fears of voters who haven't forgotten their Cold War rhetoric
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You gotta love it:
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All this proves is that there are Communists in America actively plotting to overthrow the US government. And those Communists are in Illinois, not Arizona. I think Barack Obama should tell us what's really going on with his associations to the Communist Party.
Awesome. I think Keith here has managed to figure out how to time travel from the 1950s to post his concerns on this newfangled blog thing.
Keith...the Martians are coming too....
Occam's Razor: I simply came from a McCain-Palin rally.
Yeah, that Marxist nonsense about the immiseration of the working class is just a sort of religious dogma and not, um, policy of the Republican Party USA.
Keith, I know you're joking, but just to head off any trolls trying to make hay out of this:
The Communist Party USA has been active in the US for nearly 100 years, they do not plot to overthrow the US, they advocate changing the form of US government by getting communists elected to legally change the system of government, advocating violence or treason are grounds for expulsion from the party, they have members in every state in the country including Arizona, and Obama has no association with them other than his local paper deciding it'd be fun to run a piece about the GOP's red-baiting from the perspective of some actual reds.
Senator, I served with Nikita Khruschev. I knew Nikita Khruschev. Nikita Khruschev was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Nikita Khruschev
Buzzkill. ;-) It's no fun if you have to use facts.
darn. I was so hoping he was a socialist. oh well, there's always next four years.
it's amazing how we never learn from history. the red scare, by all accounts, was a terrible time for the us--we let fear dominate our politics and our morals. wow, sounds like the past 8 years, doesn't it?
@Bentsonski:
Very funny to me, also because I lived in Cuba during my first 32 years and of course, Obama has nothing to do with that.
After this latest credit crunch bank bailout thingo, I honestly have no idea what "socialist" means any more. "Each according to their abilities" on the way up; "each according to their needs" on the way down?
Would pointing out Libero Della Piana matter?
Don't get me wrong, I think that the Communists (political party) are similar to, say, the Objectivists (political party) at this point.
It's a place where people who read a lot (I mean, a *LOT* a lot) hang out and argue about books and brag about how they got more out of the book than anyone else at the meeting did.
It's like Oprah's book club, only for dorks.
But pointing out that this Communist Party guy doesn't thrill to Obama is a defense against Obama's being a communist only if pointing out that that Communist Party guy digging Obama is evidence for it.
Jay,
It's OK to just laugh at it. It really is. We argue quite a bit over here. But sometimes, if only to break the tension, it's good to watch Ric Flair clips, or talk about the NFL, or talk about Lord Of The Rings, or--failing everything else--just have a laugh. It won't hurt, I promise.
See also: http://socialistworker.org/2008/10/15/comrade-in-chief
From my socialist perspective, it's much more annoying to see the bank bailout labeled as "socialism" than to see Obama tagged that way. Only the sore-loser far right thinks Obama is a socialist. An unfortunate number of otherwise sharp people think that a redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to capital managers is socialism.
These things are serious until they aren't.
Or they aren't until they are.
Something like that.
I'm a Canadian and, therefore, a socialist. I guess.
You can have my socialized medicine when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
(I've always wanted to say that.)
--Devin
I remember reading that the head of the American Communist Party was asked by a reporter if "FDR's New Deal carried out the communist platform?"
The man responded: "Yeah, on a stretcher."
The CPUSA has endorsed every democrat for president since the Politburo started telling them to do that. The Soviet Union died quite some time ago and the CPUSA consists of like 15 retirees living on Social Security.
Anyone redbashing on the CPUSA is like someone throwing brickbats at The Monkee's to protest pop culture.
Mark Ambinder has a good post about this:
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/doing_socialism_v_thinking_abo.php