Is/was Barack Obama a member of Democratic Socialists of America? It sure looks like it.
No worries–they were probably just guys in his neighborhood.
Between these folks and Ayers and Dorhn (who are no doubt members as well, unless it wasn’t radical enough for them), it sounds like a pretty bad neighborhood.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jonah Goldberg wonders if Senator Obama ever read his home-town newspaper.
And then of course there was Ayers’ own autobiography, the profile in the NY Times in which Ayers casually said he’d wished he’d made more bombs etc.
I don’t know Chicago well. But my sense of the place is that they take politics pretty seriously there. Young, very smart and hyper ambitious politicians like Obama tend to read the local paper (never mind the New York Times, which ran a couple dozen stories mentioning Ayers and his terrorist ties between 1990 and 2004). The political class in Chicago knows who everybody is, where they came from, what they believe. They tend to learn about people who give them jobs, money and political opportunities. And, people like Ayers don’t exactly keep their views or radical past a closely guarded secret, particularly when they remain unreprentant.
In short, I think it’s a lie — and a pretty stupid one — to say that Obama didn’t know about any of this. The obvious answer is he just didn’t care.
Yes, just like Reverend Wright’s rantings. It was no problem. Until, that is,it became politically inconvenient to him. He is lying about his relationship with Ayers, which means that he was also almost certainly lying about not knowing what was being preached in his church of twenty years. Why should we believe anything he says?
[Update late morning]
It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood, with advice columns from Barack’s and Michelle’s neighbors:
Dear Mary Ellen: Your question is borne of bourgeois ignorance and manufactured consent. A violent revolution is coming, and the workers will throw off the chains of their oppression and rise up in a bloody revolt against AmeriKKKa’s legacy of racism, genocide, and hegemonic corporatist empire. In the coming revolution, the state and its propagandist education apparatus will wither away, thus ushering in a new age of proletarian enlightenment. All education will be free, and all children, including yours, will be rescued from their bourgeois shackles and freed to join the vanguard for permanent revolution.
Bernadine has legal advice as well. Also, grooming tips from Rod.
[Afternoon update]
The memory hole doesn’t work so well any more, what with web archives. Politically Drunk has found some pages that had been previously scrubbed that confirm Senator Obama’s membership in the New Party:
From the October 1996 Update of the DSA ‘New Party’:
“New Party members are busy knocking on doors, hammering down lawn signs, and phoning voters to support NP candidates this fall. Here are some of our key races…Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).”
Beyond the archived web page from the Socialist New Party is the recognition by the “Progressive Populist” magazine in November 1996 that Obama was indeed an acknowledged member of the Socialist Party.
“New Party members and supported candidates won 16 of 23 races, including an at-large race for the Little Rock, Ark., City Council, a seat on the county board for Little Rock and the school board for Prince George’s County, Md. Chicago is sending the first New Party member to Congress, as Danny Davis, who ran as a Democrat, won an overwhelming 85% victory. New Party member Barack Obama was uncontested for a State Senate seat from Chicago.”
Is there any record of Senator Obama demanding a correction to the publications?
Next, I expect him to say “that’s not the Democratic Socialist Party that I knew…”
