Obama was a Member ACORN's Socialists "New Party"
-[T]he New Party and its parent organization the Democratic Socialists of America considered Barack Obama to be their guy--one of a handful of avowed socialists running for office at any level in the United States. It strikes me that Obama has some explaining to do.
-[T]he New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials -- most often Democrats. The New Party's short-term objective was to move the Democratic Party leftward, thereby setting the stage for the eventual rise of new Marxist third party.
-So the New Party claimed Obama as a member as of 1996. Progressive Populist magazine agreed in this editorial: New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.
-While ACORN played an important founding role for the New Party nationally, ACORN was clearly the main force behind the New Party chapter in Chicago.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021724.php
Barack Obama, Socialist?
Share Post PrintOctober 8, 2008 Posted by John at 8:54 PM
This may be a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The political, media, cultural and social establishments are determined to elect the pro-status quo, anti-change candidate, Barack Obama, as President. The power and money arrayed behind Obama seem unbeatable. At the same time, it is inconceivable that the American people would elect a socialist President. So, if this report is correct, something's got to give.
In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. ...
After allegations surfaced in early summer over the 'New Party's' endorsement of Obama, the Obama campaign along with the remnants of the New Party and Democratic Socialists of America claimed that Obama was never a member of either organization. The DSA and 'New Party' then systematically attempted to cover up any ties between Obama and the Socialist Organizations. However, it now appears that Barack Obama was indeed a certified and acknowledged member of the DSA's New Party.
On Tuesday, I discovered a web page that had been scrubbed from the New Party's website. The web page which was published in October 1996, was an internet newsletter update on that years congressional races. Although the web page was deleted from the New Party's website, the non-profit Internet Archive Organization had archived the page.
Here it is:
So the New Party claimed Obama as a member as of 1996. Progressive Populist magazine agreed in this editorial:
New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George's County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.
The Democratic Socialist Party of America was slightly more modest in claiming Senator Obama as an adherent:
Still, it appears clear that as of 1996, the New Party and its parent organization the Democratic Socialists of America considered Barack Obama to be their guy--one of a handful of avowed socialists running for office at any level in the United States. It strikes me that Obama has some explaining to do.
UPDATE: See also our more recent post Compare and Contrast.
FURTHER UPDATE: Ann Althouse, whom I respect greatly, says it's "not fair to call the New Party 'socialist.'" She recalls it as a "left-leaning and progressive" party. Perhaps. But all of the descriptions I've seen of the New Party's ideology qualify, in my view, as socialist. Discover the Networks writes:
[T]he New Party was a Marxist political coalition whose objective was to endorse and elect leftist public officials -- most often Democrats. The New Party's short-term objective was to move the Democratic Party leftward, thereby setting the stage for the eventual rise of new Marxist third party.
Most New Party members hailed from the Democratic Socialists of America and the militant organization ACORN. The party's Chicago chapter also included a large contingent from the Committees of Correspondence, a Marxist coalition of former Maoists, Trotskyists, and Communist Party USA members.
If this New Party web site is legit, and I see no reason to think it isn't, the party's own statement of its principles is clearly socialist. For example:
* The establishment, defense, and facilitation of worker, consumer, shareholder, and taxpayer rights to democratic self-organization.
* The democratization of our banking and financial system-including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets, community-controlled alternative financial institutions. [Ed.: Hey, we may be in the process of "achieving" that one, and during a Republican administration, too!]
* Full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal "social wage" to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity.
I would call that a socialist party, but maybe Barack Obama disagrees. Maybe he thinks it was only "leftist" and "progressive." What's important, I think, is not what adjectives we use to characterize the New Party's platform, but rather, that Barack Obama be asked whether he was, in fact, a member or adherent of the New Party, as it claimed, and whether he did then, and does today, subscribe to that party's platform. Whether that platform is termed "socialist" or "leftist" is, I think, of small moment.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTc3NzZkZDYxODZiZjE2OTg5YWRmNDkzM2U0YTIwZGQ=&w=MQ==
While ACORN played an important founding role for the New Party nationally, ACORN was clearly the main force behind the New Party chapter in Chicago. In general, New Party chapters built around an ACORN nucleus were the most disciplined and successful party outposts. Nationally, the New Party’s biggest wins were in Chicago, very much including Obama’s victory in his 1996 run for the Illinois state senate. Chicago’s New Party was actually formed around two core elements, ACORN and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 880. Yet, as Sifry notes, SEIU 880 was itself an ACORN offshoot.
Together ACORN and SEIU 880 were the dominant forces in Chicago’s New Party. True, there was also participation by open socialists, but these were not a majority of New Party organizers. You can certainly argue, as libertarian blogger Trevor Louden has, that whether openly or not, the New Party in Chicago and beyond was effectively socialist. It’s a powerful argument and worthy of consideration. After all, according to Rutgers University political scientist Heidi J. Swarts, ACORN’s leaders see themselves as “a solitary vanguard of principled leftists.” So a party outpost built around ACORN would be a party built around “principled vanguard leftists.” Sounds pretty socialist to me. Yet, as I’ve emphasized, we needn’t resolve the “socialism” question to conclude that the New Party, and particularly its Chicago branch, was far to the left of the Democratic party, and largely under the control of ACORN.
Consider “The People Shall Rule,” a look at some of Chicago ACORN’s electoral efforts co-authored by Madeline Talbott, Obama’s closest ACORN contact and a key New Party supporter. In describing former Chicago ACORN leader Ted Thomas’s successful run for alderman, Talbott stresses that, even after election, Thomas retained his ACORN ties. Thomas was invited to retain his seat on ACORN’s Chicago board, ACORN members continued to treat him as a leader, and Thomas continued to brainstorm and strategize with ACORN’s other organizers. Talbott is so busy detailing Thomas’s continued links to ACORN that she doesn’t even bother to mention that Thomas actually ran on behalf of the New Party. (See “NP Chair elected to Chicago City Council.”)
As so often with ACORN, technically separate organizations are often relatively meaningless designations for different branches of ACORN itself. And in Chicago, the New Party was very much an ACORN-dominated operation. Ted Thomas was a city alderman, de facto ACORN leader, and New Party chair all at once. So Obama’s ties to the New Party represent yet another important, and still unacknowledged, link between Obama and ACORN.
We already know that Obama’s ties to ACORN’s Madeline Talbott ran deep. Less known is that Obama’s links to Chicago ACORN/New Party leader Ted Thomas were also strong. Thomas was one of a handful of aldermen who stood with Obama in his unsuccessful 2000 race for Congress against Bobby Rush. Obama is also had long-standing ties to SEIU Local 880, an ACORN union spin-off and a bulwark of Chicago’s New Party. In his 2004 race for the Democratic Senate nomination, SEIU Local 880 strongly endorsed Obama, citing his long history of support for the group.
REVEALING TIE
So the fact that Obama received the New Party’s endorsement in his first run for office in 1995-96 cannot be dismissed as insignificant. On the contrary, Obama’s ties to the New Party, and the New Party’s backers at ACORN (often the very same people), are long-standing, substantial, and reveal a great deal about his personal political allegiances. Because it was a fusion party, the New Party did not require that all the candidates it endorsed be members. Yet the New Party’s endorsements were carefully targeted. There was no attempt to endorse candidates in every race, or even to set up nationwide chapters. Carefully selected races in carefully targeted cities were seized upon — and only when the candidate fit the profile of a decidedly left-leaning progressive Democrat. In this way, the New Party set out to form a hard-left “party within a party” among the Democrats.
More than this, we now have substantial evidence that Obama himself was in fact a New Party member. We even have a photograph of Obama appearing with other successful New Party candidates. Clearly, then, it is more than fair to identify Obama with the hard-left stance of the New Party and its ACORN backers. In her recent study of ACORN and the Gamaliel Foundation, the two groups of community organizers to which Obama was closest, Heidi Swarts describes their core ideology as “redistributionist.” Joe the Plumber take note. Whether formally socialist or not, Obama ties with ACORN and its New Party political arm show that spreading your wealth around has long been his ultimate goal.
All this means that Barack Obama is far from the post-partisan, post-ideological pragmatist he pretends to be. On the contrary, Obama’s ideological home is substantially to the left of the Democratic-party mainstream, so far to the left that he has one foot planted outside the party itself. And since the New Party Chicago was essentially an electoral arm of ACORN, Obama’s New Party tie, is yet another example of his deep links to the far-left militant organizers of that group. Obama’s account of his limited ties to ACORN in the third debate was clearly not truthful. Likewise, his earlier denials of ties to ACORN have fallen apart.
At what point will the press force Obama to own up to the full extent of his ties to ACORN? At what point will the press demand a full accounting of Obama’s ties to the New Party? At what point will the depth of Obama’s redistributionist economic stance be acknowledged? Barack Obama is hiding the truth about his political past, and the press is playing along.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
posted by Fred Martinez @ 9:50 PM
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