Socialist? Preposterous! Absurd!
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| Wed, 10-29-2008 - 7:30am |
McCain Campaign Calls Obama a “Socialist”—But Why is That a Smear?
>>Barack Obama is a socialist like Harper’s Magazine is a media conglomerate. It’s the most preposterous charge I’ve heard in a pretty crazy campaign. When they keep saying that Barack Obama puts socialism ahead of entrepreneurship, I keep thinking of the vast amount of money he’s been collecting from Wall Street for his campaign. His number one bundler is Goldman Sachs, which is—has given him up to this point I think about $740,000. The New York Times, just the other day, has revealed that there’s a new way the two campaigns have come up with to get cash out of Wall Street, and this is Democrats and Republicans alike, with these joint campaign committees. Twelve Goldman Sachs employees were revealed in this latest report to have given more than $25,000 apiece to Obama’s campaign.
You could make the argument that Barack Obama always puts Wall Street first. I’m not going to make that argument, because I don’t know how he’s going to turn out as president. But up to this point, he’s been a champion of Wall Street interests. His number one economic adviser is Robert Rubin, the senior executive—or chairman of the executive committee of Citigroup, the former Treasury secretary, the guy who, alongside Alan Greenspan was arguing against a regulation of the derivatives market in the 1990s very forcefully. And in his own book, in The Audacity of Hope, Obama talks a lot about how much he admires investment bankers, how much he likes bankers, how he feels comfortable with them and with corporate lawyers. So, it’s an absurd charge.
But it’s even more absurd when you realize that, as Chris Wallace pointed out in that clip, John McCain, Robert Rubin, they’re all socialists now. The only one who’s not a socialist, apparently, is Alan Greenspan. He’s just shocked at what’s happened. He’s suddenly found a flaw in the plot of one of his Ayn Rand novels. I’m not sure exactly what the plot flaw is, because he doesn’t specify. But the notion that this is a left-right argument is absurd, is patently absurd, given where the money is coming from to finance these campaigns.
Now, if Obama gets out there and denounces Wall Street, that’s fine. The question is—and McCain is doing the same thing—greed on Wall Street is a constant in our history. The question now is, is a President Obama going to take this crisis, going to take this possible mandate? Because, apparently, it’s backfiring for McCain. The polls are widening. Obama is going further and further ahead. It seems to suggest that the American people are saying, “Hey, socialism, this sounds pretty good! If he’s a socialist, I’m for it.” Everybody seems to be for it. What’s he going to do with this mandate? Is he going to appoint one of usual suspects as Treasury secretary, or is he going to do something different? Is he going to do something more specific about regulating these markets, or is he going to rely on the advice of people like Robert Rubin?<<
http://i3.democracynow.org/2008/10/24/mccain_campaign_calls_obama_a_socialist

