Finding Friends On Far, Far Left

Finding Friends On Far, Far Left



By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: The saying that a man is known by the company he keeps is true of political relationships. In Barack Obama's case, some of the groups that support him are an indictment of his political orientation.

Among Obama's biggest admirers, for example, is one Pepe Lozano. Unknown at the national level, Lozano is more of a small-time agitator, just as Obama was in his community organizing days in Chicago. Maybe that explains part of the attraction.

But it's more likely that Lozano, a leader in the Chicago Young Communist League and an editorial board member of the People's Weekly World, newspaper of the Communist Party USA, finds that Obama is the communist party's best hope because of the junior senator's far-left positions.

"This is a history-making process," Lozano told a Chicago gathering of about 250 in June, "and we will be missing it if we don't do all we can to elect Barack Obama president."

The next month, the People's Weekly World editorialized in favor of Obama, calling his a "transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term."

The communist support is nothing new, however. Joel Wendland, managing editor of Political Affairs: Marxist Thought Online, another CPUSA magazine, suggested in February that Obama could be "the people's president."

Also in February, Political Affairs editor Terri Albano talked about how the "kind of upsurge" surrounding Obama "comes around just once in a lifetime. I hope for all progressives — each of us — (to) get involved. Don't stand on the sidelines. Be active. Don't let history pass you by."

While communists are endorsing Obama, the Communist Party USA isn't. But that's not because it doesn't like Obama. The CPUSA simply does not endorse candidates. Yet it issued what could be called a non-endorsement endorsement of Obama in March, saying "his campaign has the clearest message of unity and progressive change."

"This election can begin to turn the tide: It can help bring universal health care, save the environment and start the restoration of our democratic rights," the group said. "This election can strengthen democracy for all."

If Obama is smarting because he didn't get an official Communist Party USA endorsement, maybe he will be mollified by the approval of an old communist to the south. Fidel Castro in the spring wrote in the state newspaper Granma that Obama is "the most progressive candidate for the U.S. presidency."

That's an endorsement that anyone who doesn't have a socialist agenda should be ashamed of, especially given Castro's murder and intimidation of his foes and his repeated, egregious human rights violations of average Cuban citizens.

But from what we can tell, Obama has not rejected Castro's support. What we can tell, though, is that when Obama says he stands for change, he could be talking about erasing facts that he considers to be politically damaging.

Last month he scrubbed clean from his Web site evidence that he opposed the successful Iraq surge, and last winter he deleted the endorsement of the extremist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had become a political liability.

But despite his campaign's penchant for cyberhygiene, the community blog on his own Web site still has an entry that's rather incriminating: "This group is for self-proclaimed Marxists/Communists/Socialists for the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. . . . We support Barack Obama because he knows what is best for the people!" The fact that it can still be found on Obama's official site would indicate that the campaign has no problem with it — and that it might even appreciate the endorsement.

The current campaign is not Obama's first association with groups that promote socialism or its more stringent ideological cousin, communism.

In 1995, he sought the endorsement of the New Party for his 1996 state Senate candidacy. The party — a collection of anti-capitalist ex-communists and socialists that disbanded in 1998 after six years of trying to push the Democratic Party even further left — gladly gave Obama its support.

Obama also was endorsed in that election by the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist group in the U.S. While the name might sound benign, the DSA has a poisonous agenda. Its goal is to establish "an openly socialist presence in American communities and politics" and is committed to "restructuring society."

Members "are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo."

Just as it should be no surprise that a Che Guevara poster was found hanging in an Obama campaign office, it would not be a shock to see an Obama poster on a wall in the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism's headquarters.

Mark Solomon, the group's national co-chair, wrote in a virtual endorsement in February that Obama "is an attractive, articulate and talented politician" whose "campaign has sparked a powerful surge."

But that would be expected, since this group, which branched off from the Communist Party USA in 1991, organized the October 2002 rally in which Obama criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq — while still serving as a state senator in Illinois. The ties between Obama and the committees go back years.

Across the Atlantic, the Party of European Socialists also has given its blessing.

President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen says that "Obama is the choice for change and renewal. He gives hope to millions of Americans and Europeans for a fairer world. . . . Progressive Europeans are united in hope that Barack Obama will be the new president following the U.S. elections."

Obama supporters might excuse the candidate's support from communists, Marxists and socialists, saying he is the only alternative since these groups would never support the Republican nominee. (Which is entirely correct and indicative of the Democratic Party's continuing decline into the pit of democratic socialism.)

But the truth is, these groups usually reserve their endorsements and support for fringe candidates, not someone from a major party. That's not the case this time around. They seem to have their man.



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