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Obama is a socialist now?
FOR the last few weeks, McCain's campaign catchphrase was: "Obama palling with domestic terrorists.” For over a week now, the catchword is Obama's economic agenda is "socialistic."
When explaining his middle class tax cut for families making less than $250,000 annually in a campaign stump in Ohio, Senator Barack Obama used the "apparently" unpopular phrase “spreading the wealth around.” Rival candidate Senator John McCain has since been hammering out to suggest Obama a "socialist”and that his middle-class tax plan “is not a tax cutit's just another government giveaway.”
Driven by sheer desperations, McCain's unsavoury campaign is not only turning uglier as November 4 is closing init's unfolding into a pattern of all out assault to demonise Obama and his tax cut for 95% of Americans.
In rally after rally, McCain and Palin are forewarning voters that Obama is a "shifty, job-killing socialist”one who is far more liberal than mainstream Americans, and is pursuing "socialist” tax policies.
At a fundraising event in North Carolina, Palin credited the constituency as "pro-America areas of this great nation.” Another North Carolina congressman, warming up crowd in a Palin rally shouted: "Liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish, and achieve, and believe in God”
In MSNBC's “Hardball” with Chris Mathew, a Minnesota congresswoman pronounced herself “very concerned that (Obama) may have anti-American views.” Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich, usually levelheaded,
said: "With all due respect, the man is a socialist."
Hard-hitting campaign of mails and automatic phone calls ("robocalls”) to voters in swing states assailing Obama's character, past acquaintances, record on abortion, patriotism, and lately "tax poljci.es as socialistic" have already 'been running for over two weeks now, which most votes ignore as a mishmash of irrelevance.
Does McCain really believe he would win the White House by relentlessly pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy about his rival?
All of McCain's attacks on Obama have unpalatable racial nuance. As Rosa Brooks (Oct. 23, Los Angeles Times) decoded them: “There's the America that might vote for Obama (a suspect America populated by people with liberal notions, big-city ways and, no doubt, dark skin), and then there's the 'real' America, where people live in small towns, believe in God and country, and are ... well ... white.”
One wonders what the Republicans are thinking, given 80% of Americans live in metropolitan areas, not small towns; ethnic and racial minorities account for 33% of the US population; 45% of children under 5 are minorities and increasing; 88% people are Godfearing and 70% consider all other religions are valid for salvation.
On the question of patriotism: 59% people think wearing an American flag pin is a way of showing patriotism but 66% think that protesting US policies they oppose is equally patriotic. Lastly, more than 50% prefer the Democratic Party over the Republican Party.
Everyone agrees if Obama loses
the election it's because white voters have changed their mind in the voting booth. But if the projections hold, Obama will be elected president by winning the largest
share of white votes by a Democrat in 30 years.
Knowing all these statistics — and down in the polls in every swing state by at least 8% or moreit's inexplicable why McCain's campaign is still pursuing a divisive and destructive politics of discredit. Latest CBS-NYT nationwide poll (October 24) gives Obama a 13% lead over McCain. The campaign seems kaput with internal dissension and an "epidemic of incontinence” on his
campaign is slowly unfolding.
Nicholas Kristof (Oct 22, NYT) thinks that Barack Obama's presidential victory would help shape American politics in the way that
the Marshall Plan did in the 1950s or that John Kennedy's presidency did in the early 1960s.
In his endorsement, George Bush's former secretary of state General Collin Powell (a lifelong Republican) said that Obama is a "transformational figure” and that his win “will also not only electrify our country, I think it'll electrify the world.”
These assertions are visibly borne out by a 22-nation BBC survey in which the people polled favoured Obama over McCain in
cvery single country by four to one over all. Nearly 50% said that Obama victory would "fundamentally change" their perceptions of America. The Economist also echoed the same sentiment: “Across the continent, Bush hatred has been replaced by Obama-mania."
Being a minority black American (13.4%), Obams's possible winning the US presidency in an overwhelming white majority country (74%, including white’ Hispanic) may seem shockingly surreal but it's not unprecedented. Don't forget: Jamaica's 95% percent black population elected a white man as its prime minister in 1980 who held that office for the entire decade.
McCain's new "wealth-spreading” or "socialistic” campaign slogans against Obama overlooks the fact that the US always had a progressive tax codehigher income earners progressively pay higher taxes. The facts are:
In 2001, McCain voted against Bush tax cut arguing that “the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans.”
Calling Obama's tax credit to those who pay none as "socialistic”
is distorting since the 40% working people who don't pay income tax still have 7.65% taken out of their payroll taxes.
Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps are social welfare programs supported by tax payers.
The $700 billion Wall Street rescue package that includes buying shares of nine largest banks, government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and lending money to other large financial institutions and businesses such as automobile companies is also socialistic.
McCain's $5000 tax credit for the 47 million uninsured to buy health insurance is a welfare programtaking money from the t^x-payers and giving them to nqn-tax payers.
Ruth Marcus (in Oct. 22, RealClearPolitics.com) said: "The government is fundamentally about sharing for the common good; taxes are, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, the price of a civilised society. McCain is running a cam-paign both uncivil and uncivilisingone I expect he will ruewin or lose.”
If elected president, Obama will face many challenges:
Rescuing the country from the ongoing financial imbroglio to a path of stable growth and prosperity.
Pass a health-care reform that essentially realises health insurance close to universal coverage.
Infrastructure investment and achieve energy independence away from a reliance from imported fossil fuels.
Bringing the Iraq war to a peaceful end.
Formulate a winning strategy against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
On foreign policy, Obama favors greater international cooperation and the forceful use of diplomacy before being adversarial.
These aren't easily attainable goals by any stretch but then no president is known to achieve all of his agenda. If he succeeds in achieving many of these goals, Obama would be acclaimed as the most accomplished president since Franklin Roosevelt.
Dr. AbduBah A Dewan is Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University.