Obama '08?

Rusting Star

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 12/14/2006

Politics: The media have anointed Sen. Barack Obama the next great thing, our best hope for the presidency ?- other than Hillary Clinton, of course. But beyond the publicity, there's not much there.

While Oprah and the big thinkers at the Huffington Post and Daily Kos go on about the junior senator from Illinois, others point out that less than two years into his first term as a U.S. officeholder, Obama doesn't have much to show. No legislative triumphs that offer a glimpse into how he would lead, no defining efforts of statecraft that reveal the core of his character.

But slight though Obama's record might be, one thing is clear: He leans decidedly to the left.

His career in the Illinois senate ?- which former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay puts "on a par with a Marxist leftist" ?- as well as his short time in the U.S. Senate, are useful tools for determining where Obama stands. And it's a far cry from the "moderate" image that's being marketed.

• Obama is certainly no friend of the taxpayer, for instance. In its most recent report card (for 2005), the National Taxpayers Union gave him an F. The group ranks him 96th of 100 senators, with a rating of 6%, meaning that he darned near "approved every spending proposal and opposed every pro-taxpayer reform." He's also among the biggest spenders.

• The National Taxpayers Limitation Committee gives Obama an 8 for his work in 2005 and 2006 ?- another F. Here, he's in good company at the back of the class with the likes of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer.

• Obama also gets an 8 from the American Conservative Union for his votes in 2005, again putting him in the company of the aforementioned Democrats. In his first year in office, the ACU notes, Obama supported neither property rights nor budget and spending reform. Not quite the group's "Worst of the Worst," but close.

Groups on the left, however, find Obama very much to their liking. For example:

• Americans for Democratic Action gave him a 100% liberal quotient for 2005. The ADA is pleased Obama voted against free trade, against the nomination of Janice Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., and against tax and spending cuts.

• Obama also gets high marks from the American Civil Liberties Union, voting the ACLU's way 83% of the time on issues it thinks are important. One in particular, according to the ACLU's cockeyed way of looking at the world, was Obama's opposition to Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.

• Obama got a 100% rating from the League of Conservation Voters for voting against offshore oil drilling and against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development while supporting low-income energy assistance.

Even the nonpartisan National Journal says Obama is no centrist, noting that he voted to the left of 82.5% of his Senate colleagues in 2005. His National Journal rating is more liberal than those of both Schumer and Clinton and close to Kerry's 86.7%.

Next week, Obama-for-president commercials will begin airing in New Hampshire. The image will be that of a new face with a bright smile who'll dispense with the old ways. Truth is, there's nothing new here.

I really wonder that the conservatives don't support a possible Democrat candidate :wink:

I'm sure he's in agony for having to tease people like that.

I have joined up with the Kucinich support group on-line but keeping an open mind about Obama

I can't imagine a negative electoral consequence for Obama here. Those who might be influenced by the middle name will be fringe types who would not, as Obama suggests, vote for him in any case. And there is the risk that such a campaign tactic would produce a backlash with negative consequences going against republican candidates. The boogieman isn't in the voting booth.

The real concern is the decline in American political discourse. To the degree that you guys give licence to this decline, to that degree your society is made less rational, more hateful and divisive, and your political process demeaned and made less helpful and effective for all of you.

An earlier example saw Hastert saying about George Soros, "I don't know that his money doesn't come from the drug trade." That's true, he didn't know that. It's equally true that "I don't know that Hastert or bill or okie don't rape children". In either case, such a public statement has an evident intention, which is to slime through irrelevant or unwarranted suggestion. It is moral and intellectual barrel-bottom and its destructive to your democratic enterprise.

Re: the Will piece posted a bit ago, there are several tonal issues that had me lifting an eyebrow but I do think he has a point about Obama backing himself into a corner the longer he allows speculation to build. If after all of this he decides "no", it may well harm his chances for a later bid (as opposed to if he just kept to his "absolutely not" early pronouncements and never got to this point).

Several of us think he's going to say "yes" anyway, but that's another piece of evidence, as I think Obama is smart enough to realize that (the consequences of getting the girl on her tippytoes but failing to kiss her) and wouldn't take that chance. I think he's just picking his moment. (Ooh!)

Voteview.com, a website run by a network of sociologists, uses a scientifically peer-reviewed methodology to rank Members of Congress on a left-right scale. It's the closest thing I know to an objective measure of these things, and the only variant of these rankings that I trust. Its analsysis of the 109th Senate assigns 100 ranks, ranging from Barbara Boxer (D) (#1) on the left to John Sununu Jr. (R) (#100) on the right. Only one Republican, John Chafee (R)(#46), is to the left of any Democrat; only one Democrat, Ben Nelson (D) (#47), is to the right of any Republican. (As a sidenote, the 109th Congress was the most polarized since the end of Reconstruction.)

Anyway, which rung of this scale is Obama on? He ranks #20 -- almost in the middle among the Democratic Senators, but left of any Republican Senator of course.

Spoken like a girl on her tiptoes.

I thought of that. :-) I wrote the "ooh" first and then added the clarification line (tippytoes et al in parentheses) and then frowned at the juxtaposition but decided to leave it. Everyone already knows I'm a fan. :-)

McG, There are no "platforms" until he announces to run for prez. All his speeches are generalities without specifics that seems to win friends and supporters.

I'll buy that, my friend... but mostly out of courtesy. However, directing your animosity towards matter-of-fact-mentions of a man's middle name seems a bit misguided. Campaign Finance Reform is what you should be screaming for. Between the Swifties and Michael Moore you can find the barrel's true bottom. Guys like George Soros and Bob Perry finance much of the objectionable material, but it is the laws you should be denouncing. You will forever get more bang for your buck slinging mud (and always have), so limiting individual's ability to finance 527's is one of the keys. Nimh made an awesome point a while back about the 2 Party System being to blame for much of the excess mudslinging. Since both the mudslinger and the target get muddy, Multi-Party systems provide a deterrent to the tactic. This would make an awesome corner stone for an Obama Candidacy, and would likely earn my vote. Conversely, I don't think we need to regulate the use of middle names.

I think it's a given that he'll say yes for all the reasons Will mentioned. (And I understand the raised eyebrow thing. It seems a given that a right-of-center pundit is unable to give a 100% rave review to somebody left-of-center even when the positives substantially outweigh the negatives. Ditto for a left tilted pundit trying to write something favorable about somebody right of center. But we all have to smooth down our bristles a bit when our heroes seem to almost be criticized by rote.)

I thought the most interesting thing in Will's column, however, was the analysis of the party's expectations of being re-elected and how a Democrat win looks probable in 2008 and a GOP win could be probable in 2016 which would likely be Obama's next opportunity in any case if he doesn't take this one.

I don't have a clue whether Will's assessment of that is on the mark, but he makes a convincing argument.

For the sake of argument, if Will is correct about that, and anybody else is paying attention to that, don't you think that will make for an even bigger catfight in the primaries?

OB, I think you are sadly mistaken to group the Swiftees with Michael Moore. There is no comparison between honorable veterans bringing out the truth of their own legitimate experience and a socialist windbag that makes so called "documentaries" with fiction.

I notice, okie, that you're generous in applying the "socialist" label. That's your perogative, of course, but you might be more persuasive if you lightened up on the red baiting...

I'm sorry you haven't apparently figured out what Michael Moore is about. Simply go to his own website and you will find links to some of his favorite websites, including this one:

http://www.broadleft.org/

which contains this information:
"This page contains the entire spectrum of political parties, organizations and groups which consider themselves to be leftist or have origins in leftist movements. You will find democratic socialists and reform communists as well as social democratic and green parties, traditional communists, marxists-leninists of stalinist or maoist persuasions, the tendencies of trotskyism, left communists, guerrilla organizations, leftist movements struggling for national or ethnic liberation or for regional autonomy, the different currents of anarchism, alliances with leftist participation and parties outside of these categories."

I'm not sure what this has to do with Obama, but your link, okie, leads to a site with Copyright by Nico Biver and hosted by the Marxists Internet Archive.

I'm a bit confused now about your point here.

Sorry to simply answer a question. I pointed out to OB that the Swiftees and Michael Moore were not a good comparison, and labeled Michael Moore as a socialist windbag, which he is, and does not deserve to be compared in the same sentence with the Swift Boat veterans, at which point I was accused of red baiting, so I simply pointed out a link from Michael Moore's own website to demonstrate he has clear socialist and communist leanings.

Just trying to set the record straight, thats all.
Carry on.

You mean ...

Do you know that your President is quite friendly with Tony Blair, the leader of the Socialistic Party in Britain?

Walter, Lumping Michael Moore with Tony Blair is almost as bad as lumping Michael Moore with the Swiftees. We would be quite glad if Michael would move to Germany if you want him.

There are many contexts and degrees of the term and meaning of the term, "Socialist," and I think it is pointless to go into that subject for now. Suffice it to say Michael is a nut, take the term "socialist" out of it if that makes you feel better, Walter.