Obama's Communist Party Endorsement
Painful as it may be, please take two minutes out of your life to peruse the following list of "accomplishments" touted by an Obama campaign website making its case for his re-election.
The huge voter surge in 2008 elected Barack Obama, the first African American president. In the face of non-stop opposition, he pushed through:
- Affordable Health Care Act extends coverage to 35 million uninsured people, outlaws denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions and extends until age 26 coverage of children under their parents [sic] plans.
- Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for equal pay for women.
- Stabilized the economy with $789 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that saved or created 3 million jobs. Invested billions in clean energy jobs, saved the auto industry.
- Unemployment benefits for millions of workers despite Republican threats to shut down the government. Obama was forced to yield on Bush-era tax cuts for the rich that he wanted to terminate.
- Appointed two women to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the first Latina woman, who support the rights of working people.
- Established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and used a recess-appointment to name the director over Republican opposition.
- Created a new food safety agency to protect people from food-borne illness.
- Ended profit-grab by private banks on students [sic] loans, reestablishing Federal control on these loans and used the savings to extend loans to more students.
- Doubled the funding for Pell Grants to $32 billion, increasing size of the grant $819 to a maximum of $5,500.
- Ended the war in Iraq and moved toward ending the war in Afghanistan.
Dull, isn't it? It's dull because you have heard it all before. The Democratic National Convention resounded with these talking points all week long. Obama and his surrogates have recited them all for months, years.
And from which "Obama 2012" website did I copy and paste this dreadful resume of progressive policy and executive overreach?
Actually, I copied it from the website of the Communist Party USA. Their homepage features a headline article, "Why Vote?" This article offers the above list of Obama's achievements, prefaced by a warning:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and many others, died for a most precious human right, the right to vote. Now, the same racists who denied Black voters ballot rights in the 1960s are trying to keep voters from the polls in 2012.
In the old days, they called it a "poll tax." They rode at night and wore white sheets. Today, they wear expensive suits. But they still steal elections by cutting off early voting, by imposing photo ID requirements that poor voters can't afford. It's called "voter suppression."
It will take a fight to defeat these dirty tricks. Voter suppression tactics violate the letter and spirit of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Everything from sit-ins to mass rallies on state capitol steps are called for.
This is not the first time the CPUSA has officially supported Obama, of course. Alternative media voices have been trying to break through the MSM soundproofing on this matter for some time. (Examples here and here.) The wording of this year's endorsement is particularly full-throated, however, which in itself ought to be disturbing to anyone still on the fence about the nature of the man, his party, and his policies. And while the extreme race-baiting language used in the endorsement is more in keeping with the rhetorical tone of the Weather Underground or MSNBC than with that of "respectable" Democrat sources, is its point any different in principle from many things we hear from elected Democrats every day?
Nevertheless, we must not allow the extreme rhetoric in which the endorsement is couched to distract us from a more fundamental issue, which is this: the CPUSA endorses Barack Obama on the very same grounds -- even in the same words -- that Obama uses in defense of himself.
If a communist were operating under the official umbrella of the Democratic Party, and were thus forced to use Democrat talking points rather than speak his own radical mind, we would interpret this as typical leftist cynicism and subterfuge. But this time the words appear on the CPUSA's own website. These are the words the official voice of international communism in America is choosing to use to explain its reasoning to its own target audience. No one visiting the CPUSA site is confused about the nature of the organization. The website's slogan is "Radical Ideas. Real Politics." The Party's prominently displayed self-description appears just under the Obama endorsement:
A better and peaceful world is possible -- a world where people and nature come before profits. That's socialism. That's our vision. We are the Communist Party USA.
The homepage includes links to their sister site, "People's World," featuring articles with titles such as "Romney-Ryan white skin strategy" and a policy statement from Party leader Sam Webb: "Defeating the Rightwing on the Road to Socialism."
In short, while communist propaganda is by definition a pack of lies, the CPUSA is refreshingly up-front about one thing: their primary and defining purpose is to achieve communism in the United States of America. In pursuit of that defining purpose, they have for years thrown their lot in with the Democratic Party, and they are now very strongly advocating for Barack Obama in particular.
The point here is not to accuse Obama of guilt by association. The endorsement of communists does not prove him a communist.
The interesting question, however, is this: why does the CPUSA, in speaking to its own members, urge them to support Obama by citing the very policies and decisions that Obama himself is most proud of?
The answer is as unavoidable as it is straightforward: the Communist Party regards Barack Obama's signature achievements and defining principles as consistent with, and conducive to, its own defining goal -- namely, the establishment of a socialist workers' state in America. And of course, as America's official defenders of the Marxist flame, they certainly know whereof they speak. Their belief is quite correct, and conservatives ought to be happy to help them make their case.
ObamaCare is an important step on the path to the full denial of the individual's right to self-preservation.
Equal pay legislation grants the government the power to determine the value of "commodities," including labor, and thereby directly undermines the foundations of the free market, voluntarism, and private property.
"Investing billions" in "jobs," "saving the auto industry," and the "new food safety agency" advance the goal of "workers'" (aka government's) control of the means of production.
"Unemployment benefits for millions of workers" [insert own joke here].
The "rights of workers" advanced by Obama's two female Supreme Court appointments are perfectly in line with the slogan the CPUSA loaned to the Democrats on day one of the latter's convention: "Progress for People," where "people," like "workers," is a time-honored "code word" for the proletariat.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, resulting from the Dodd-Frank legislation, and constructed by Elizabeth "Cherokee" Warren, is a practical step toward Marxism's key goal of eliminating private banking.
In sum, the Communist Party loves the same Obama policies and accomplishments that the Democratic Party establishment loves, that the mainstream media loves, that the unions love, and that Charles Schumer, Jennifer Granholm, Harry Reid, and Dick Durbin love. They want more of the same. The CPUSA sees what most of us see, and what the Democratic Party would somehow like to keep its permanent underclass -- um, that is, its voter base -- from seeing: the Obama agenda is driving America "forward" on "the Road to Socialism." The only difference is that the communists are honest enough to spell it out.
The Obama campaign is unlikely to trumpet this particular ringing endorsement between now and Election Day. That's no reason for the rest of the world to remain quiet about it. On the contrary, this deserves to be shouted from the rooftops.
Communists for Obama!