I really haven’t understood why the right is freaking out about Obama being a socialist/communist/redistributionist. After all, Obama is talking about doing crazy socialist things like taking your money and using it to build schools in poor areas to better educate children. This is not exactly taking your money to give to me.
But I was taking this at face value. I was taking the attack as an actual attack on Obama’s economic plans. It isn’t. John Judis has nailed exactly why:
I mention the Bradley effect because I think, too, that McCain and Sarah Palin’s attack against Obama for advocating “spreading the wealth” and for “socialism” and for pronouncing the civil rights revolution a “tragedy” because it didn’t deal with the distribution of wealth is aimed ultimately at white working class undecided voters who would construe “spreading the wealth” as giving their money to blacks. It’s the latest version of Reagan’s “welfare queen” argument from 1980. It if it works, it won’t be because most white Americans actually oppose a progressive income tax, but because they fear that Obama will inordinately favor blacks over them.
Of course it is. I don’t know why I didn’t see it, but it’s a dog-whistle, and it wasn’t meant for people like me who really don’t care if assistance goes to needy whites, needy African-Americans, needy Latinos, or needy Cylons. It’s meant to raise the specter of lazy African-Americans stealing good, hard-working white money. It’s yet another attack on race.
Seen that way, it makes sense…sort of. This is just another in the McCain campaign’s decision to put country last, to exacerbate our country’s long-simmering racial divide in order to push Johnny Maverick over the top. I had thought this was an incoherent, stupid attack, but I was wrong. It’s a disgusting attack. And it’s yet another milepost in John McCain’s slow slide into the mire.
For more on the “socialism/race dog-whistle” read Krugman’s fairly good book, Conscience Of A Liberal. It’s in part devoted to the entire history of this tactic/mindset.
Which, sadly, will work, come Election Day.
[winces]
I would really like to believe that this is not true. After all, there are sincere, non-racially-oriented differences between Republicans and Democrats on economic policy, especially tax policy. However, the fact that McCain is defending the Bush tax cuts, which he voted against, as our bulwark against socialism doesn’t do much for his position as a reasonable, rational defender of conservative economics.
It’s pretty much the difference between McCain/ Palin and these guys from the American Enterprise Institute. The former hysterically declare that the policies we had under Bill Clinton were socialist and will wreck us all. The latter mildly say, “These proposals wouldn’t deliver the economic growth that incentive-based tax cuts would,” and that the tax revenue under Obama’s plan won’t be sufficient to prevent further deficits given that he isn’t cutting spending enough.
I disagree with AEI because I’m a bit more of a Keynesian than they are, but it’s respectful disagreement, rather than Anne Applebaum’s sentiment toward McCain of “I used to respect you, but now I am afraid to let people this crazy near the White House.”
Nobody notices when they get money, they only notice when they lose it. Lower-middle-class folks only notice the taxes that come out of their paycheck, not the services they get in return. And when you’re barely scraping by and working your ass off, that tax money really hurts.
Which explain’s Obama’s tax plan.
However, those people only see the money coming out, and don’t notice the services they get, so they imagine all their tax money vanishing into the pockets of welfare bums.
Racism is the icing on this cake, as it allows the taxpayer to further “other” their imaginary welfare bum.
Oh well, at least the GOP’s attack on Obama’s tax plan means that they’ve rejected Milton Friedman, right?
Well, that didn’t take long. figures.