According to a new poll, 55 percent of likely voters believe that President Obama is a socialist. When asked whether various words and phrases accurately described the President, 33 percent said that “socialist” described the president “very well” and another 22 percent agreed that the term described him “well.”

The poll, conducted by former Bill Clinton advisor and politico James Carville’s liberal firm, Democracy Corps, found that 56 percent of likely voters view the President as “too liberal.” The poll also found that Republicans hold a 48 to 42 percent advantage over Democrats on a generic ballot.

There was a time when calling the President a socialist was considered distasteful, racist, or gutter partisanship. If you thought he was a socialist, then you were ignorant and a bigot. There was no other explanation for it.

But now with more than half of the country believing that President Obama is a socialist, those obscene charges of racism and ignorance are harder to make, and even less convincing than they may have been once upon a time. Are we really to believe that 55 percent of Americans are racist, ignorant, bigots?

Whether he is a socialist or not, he must be doing something to make more than half the country think he is. Something he’s been doing or saying has either confirmed quietly held suspicions or convinced a large number of people who weren’t sure at first.

He’s done nothing to dispel the socialist label. He’s appointed a multitude of czars to regulate industry, including financial sector CEO salaries. He’s taken over partial ownership of General Motors.

He forced through socialized national healthcare. He has initiated a sweeping crackdown on the last bastion of capitalism left in the world, Wall Street. Don’t forget his massive “stimulus” slush fund, still half unspent, that is presumably waiting to be unloaded on congressional Democrats’ pet projects right around election season.

I recently had a discussion with a friend and fellow law student about whether Obama actually is a socialist, as so many people believe. The label isn’t perfect.

Socialism was defined by German philosopher Karl Marx as entailing the public (i.e. government) ownership of the means of production. Socialism was a step away from communism, according to Marx. Eventually communism would lead to the utopian abolition of the state and absolute equality.

So is Obama a socialist? With the exception of government ownership of General Motors, Obama’s policies are not technically socialist, but rather statist or redistributionist. He’s not taken actual government ownership of industry – except cars – so it’s hard to harness him with a socialist label.

Instead, he’s decided to leave ownership in private hands, maintaining command and control indirectly through regulation. This is more like a type of economic fascism than socialism.

Fascism and socialism have a similar root in a general ideology known as “statism.” Statism holds the state to be valued above all else, especially the individual. There are many ideologies that are derived from this basic premise, but fascism and socialism share a close bond.

Hitler’s Nazi Party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, could be characterized as a type of mixture of socialism and fascism. The tie that bound the two ideologies together was unwavering allegiance to the state and state regulation and manipulation of industry.

But one thing is for sure, President Obama is a redistributionist. He whole heartedly believes in the redistribution of wealth. Joe Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber, was made famous in 2008 by his exchange with the soon-to-be President where Obama said, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

In 2001 on WBEZ-FM radio out of Chicago, up and coming Illinois State Senator Obama discussed the shortcomings of the radical Warren Court of the 1960s. He told the interviewer and audience that one of the failures of the civil rights movement of that era was that it didn’t effect “redistributive change.”

On July 7 of this year, President Obama skirted the constitutional “advice and consent” of the Senate and instead recess appointed Dr. Donald Berwick to be the top administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Republicans would have loved to have hearings on Dr. Berwick, especially comments the good doctor made in a 2008 speech in England to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their government run, single payer healthcare system.

Dr. Berwick said, “any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must – must – redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional. Britain, you chose well.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has consistently refused to answer press questions about whether the President agrees with Dr. Berwick’s endorsement of “redistribution.” But isn’t the answer obvious already?



Tar Heel Dispatch is written by Tyler Younts, a third-year law student at Campbell University. Younts, who grew up in Farmer, has a passion for writing and for politics and for writing about politics. E-mail comments to news@randolphguide.com or directly to Younts at tlyounts0209@email.campbell.edu