Many Republicans and conservatives have labeled Obama a “socialist”, including some on this board. While the use of hyperbole is hardly new in politics, it seems to me to be particularly precarious on the issue of the economy.
Socialism has long been maligned in the U.S., to the point where it has become a smear term in politics. No one wants to be associated with it, even when s/he is proposing a policy that actually is socialist. (For instance, when Maxine Waters threatened to push for socializing the oil industry, she stopped mid-sentence to substitute “government tak[over]” for “socializing”.) So, the word itself is anathema to even liberal politicians and the idea has tended to be well outside mainstream discourse.
Recently, a much-reported Rasmussen poll found that sympathy for socialism to be fairly substantial:
I don’t think too much should be made of this; I think it represents more of a disenchantment with capitalism than a renewed support for socialism. However, as with most polls, different questions yield different results, and it’s entirely possible that people’s conceptions of “socialism” and “capitalism” vary widely.
And it’s precisely on this point that the conservatives’ attack on Obama’s policies may be (strategically) wrongheaded. By polarizing the debate over wealth distribution, conservatives are effectively leaving no room for a middle ground (which moderate liberals would normally occupy). Will this backfire on them and make it easier for progressive democrats to be elected and push for a reform of the tax structure that shifts more of the tax burden on the wealthy? Or can they succeed in pulling the “center” to their side and thwarting attempts to make the tax code more progressive?
Caveats:
*This is not a debate on whether Obama is a socialist–I believe there is already a thread on that.
*I am assuming that conservatives want to prevent a European-style social-democrat government (with national healthcare, strong regulation or partial nationalization of industries, etc.) from being instantiated. This does not presume that Obama is actually advocating such policies.
That poll, note, posed the question without defining the terms “capitalism” or “socialism.” In effect they were only polling on the popularity of the words. Still an interesting result, though.
I doubt attacks against Obama are the reason, rather, when older adults hear “socialism” they think “Soviet Russia”, when younger adults hear it, they think “Sweden”. I suspect the trend will continue as we move further away in time from the Cold War
It’s a two-step process. Conservatives have long worked to make the word socialist synonymous with evil in American politics and they’ve mostly succeeded. Most Americans now believe that socialism is bad even if they have little specific knowledge of what it is.
So now all conservatives have to do is link Obama with socialism to discredit him. Even if voters agree with his actual positions, the characterization of him being a socialist will discredit him and be something he’ll have to work on overcoming.
Liberals are bigger enemies to socialism than conservatives, and that’s why socialists regard us liberals as bigger enemies: because we acknowledge that the problems exist and try to find competitive ways to tackle those problems, while conservatives say that problems like health care and social security are none of the government’s business at all.
As a liberal and a pragmatist, I want to look at each problem and use the most effective solution. If that solution can be described, sincerely or not, as socialist, isn’t really my concern. My concern is to reduce the problem.
Right. But the question is, will it work the way they intend? I’m suggesting that they may have overplayed their hand this time around, and, instead of alienating Obama’s moderate proposals, have facilitated a mainstream reconsideration of issues that were previously verbotten.
This kind of extremism might have worked when they were in power. But it’s a losing strategy when someone else is on the top of the hill.
I agree that one cannot make to much of this poll. It seems there’s a lot of confusion/ignorance about the two systems, and no definitions were provided by the poll takers.
The middle class is groaning under the weight of taxes, especially in high tax states. With shrinking incomes and higher taxes, the mood is getting ugly. If their (our) mood doesn’t improve, progressive Democrats don’t have a chance.
People can afford to play fiscal liberal when economic times are good. When economic times are bad people become fiscally conservative, in that they rein in their own spending and expenses and think that government should do the same.
Those of us who have been around for a while know that taxes on the “wealthy” eventually turn into additional taxes on the middle class if the government doesn’t get some control over spending. We’re the next group to get hit once our distinguished legislators spend the additional money they’ve appropriated from the top group. It’s a version of trickle down.
The changing definition of “wealthy”, meaning the lowering of the thresholds that define the group, doesn’t bode well for the middle class.
While the conservatives/Republicans have their problems (well deserved, I might add), we may just wake up to the fact that the only reason we want the government to go after the arbitrarily wealthy is because they stand between us and the government. We just might be hoping that the tax collector will be so preoccupied with the upper income groups that they will not notice us middling folks who are trying to lay low so we don’t get tapped as well.
Both sides are turning this into class warfare; it’s just the approach that differs. The liberals frame the wealthy as the bad guys so they can justify taking more money from them; the conservatives are taking advantage of this tactic to pretend that they wouldn’t do the same thing in this economic climate.
Normal games for both sides. The politicians win while their constituents lose.
I don’t think it’ll necessarily backfire on the Pubbies, but I think they’re shouting down the wind. Right now Americans are scared of losing their jobs, their houses, their vacations, their pensions and retirement funds … “socialism” is the least of our worries. If Barak Obama can occupy the White House while my wallet becomes safer and my mortgage interest rate drops and my investments grow, I don’t care if he’s a Zionist Nazi. It’s all about the pocketbook. And if people in other countries start liking us, and we start pulling troops out of Iraq and we make some kind of progress against Osama bin Laden — well, that’s just gravy.
Or, as my 30-year-old (conservative) son said: “Socialism? What’s that?” I told him it was where the government guaranteed health care for his year-old daughter. “Cool!” he replied.
No, they don’t. In hard times people rein in their own spending, but demand more from the government not less.
Please. The taxes of the rich have been slashed over and over again. The middle class bears as high a tax burden as it does in large part because it subsidizes the tax cuts of the wealthy.
No; it’s because by now they have most of the money in the country.
Wrong again. The Right and their rich buddies have ALWAYS thought and acted in terms of class warfare. They’ve always been stomping on the common people for as long as wealth has existed. Over the last few decades the Left and the common people of America have been as passive as corpses, taking the pounding and doing nothing to defend themselves. And finally things have gotten bad enough and the greedy incompetence of the “elite” so obvious that more people are becoming irritated at their behavior. But it’s still no more than class war from the top against class grumpiness from the bottom.
Could it backfire? It already has. People who call Obama a socialist are regarded as batshit crazy by everyone who does not call Obama a socialist. “Obama the redistributor” didn’t work in November either.
Several years ago I heard an essayist explain that this was the greatest danger /worst unintended consequence about the fall of the USSR. He argued that since we wouldn’t have the Soviets as a regular reminder of where socialism leads, that it would become more popular as an idea with people who didn’t grow up living in fear of Soviet extremism. He added that young people automatically tend to gravitate toward socialism in the West, but in the days of the Soviets most “outgrew” the mindset as they grew older, and he worried that would cease to be the case.
Given the fact that it appears to me a higher number of people older than 30 appear to keep espousing socialist theories and programs than they did when I was a teenager in the Regan/Bush I years, it’s possible he had a point.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind a bit if people quit conflating socialism with communism/Marxism. Entirely different species of apple.
I’ll also note that it wasn’t too long ago that ‘liberal’ had been worked into being an evil thing to call someone, and it seems to have recovered. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised, given the swing of the political pendulum, if a majority of Americans are at the point where they feel that adding a bit more socialism to the mix is appropriate. Perhaps disguised with a new name. Universal Health Care, for example.
And progressivism, or social democracy, is yet a third thing (right of socialist, left of liberal).
But there is a strange tendency on the right to view everything to the left of John McCain – actually, to the left of Sarah Palin – as through the wrong end of a telescope.
