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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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\u00a0African-Americans stealing good, hard-working white money. It’s yet another attack on race.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading