Why Obama's the Least Socialistic President in Modern History (And That's a Shame)

[Octafish]

I'll side with the Pink Lady over Tricky Dick, any time.

Why Obama's the Least Socialistic President in Modern History (And That's a Shame)

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
AlterNet, February 18, 2012

The Republican presidential candidates keep calling Barack Obama a socialist. If they're trying to invoke the Red Menace like Republicans of past campaigns, they're a generation too late. Americans between the ages of 19 and 29 have no memory of the Cold War. Today they have a more positive impression of socialism than they do of capitalism.

SNIP...

The Republicans who call Obama a socialist are using a GOP tactic that reached its zenith in Richard Nixon's 1950 Senate victory against Helen Gahagan Douglas. Nixon supporters handed out thousands of “Pink Sheet” flyers that year comparing his opponent's voting record to that of socialist-leaning New York City Representative Vito Marcantonio. Marcantonio ran on the American Labor Party ticket and belonged to several groups that were regarded as “red.”

Douglas considered Nixon's actions thuggery, as did a number of other Americans in both parties. She called him as “a young man in a dark shirt,” which was an indirect allusion to the fascists the US had been fighting five years before. (Upon hearing her remark, Nixon displayed an odd unfamiliarity with human anatomy. “Why, I'll castrate her!” the future president said. He also described Douglas as “pink right down to her underwear.”)

SNIP...

In fact, one of the reasons Republicans really won in 2010 was because they ran a series of very effective ads around a so-called “Seniors' Bill of Rights” whose key proviso was a direct attack on “socialist” Obama's repeated attempts to negotiate entitlement cuts: “No cuts to Medicare to pay for another program,” the Republicans declared. “Zero.”

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http://www.alternet.org/election2012/154175/why_obama%27s_the_least_socialistic_president_in_modern_history_%28and_that%27s_a_shame%29/?page=entire

My take, regarding Socialism: I prefer we move from the capitalist-winner-take-all-the-gold-and-all-the-losers-get-the-shaft model to a form of democratic socialism in which all people can enjoy private property, including ownership of corporations and businesses, homes and land. However, the ownership class -- the one-percent of one-percent -- would share in their take through taxes that fund social programs and cultural progress. Thus, it would behoove the United States to nationalize the banking, energy, health care and defense industries. Under President Obama, I doubt that will happen, which is too bad for the country and the People.