[Vision2020] Something New Here

[No Weatherman]

Something New Here
Radical? Check. Tied to ACORN? Check. Redistributionist? Check.
By Stanley Kurtz

During his first campaign for the Illinois state senate in 1995-96,
Barack Obama was a member of, and was endorsed by, the far-left New
Party. Obama's New Party ties give the lie to his claim to be a
post-partisan, post-ideological pragmatist. Particularly in Chicago,
the New Party functioned as the electoral arm of the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). So despite repeated
attempts to distance himself from ACORN, Obama's New Party ties raise
disturbing questions about his links to those proudly militant
leftists. The media's near-total silence on this critical element of
Obama's past is deeply irresponsible.

Socialist?
While a small group of bloggers have productively explored Obama's New
Party ties, discussion has often turned on the New Party's alleged
socialism. Was the New Party actually established by the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA)? Was the New Party's platform effectively
socialist in content? Although these debates are both interesting and
important, we needn't resolve them to conclude that the New Party was
far to the left of the American mainstream. Whether formally socialist
or not, the New Party and its ACORN backers favored policies of
economic redistribution. As Obama would say, they wanted to spread the
wealth around. Bracketing the socialism question and simply taking the
New Party on its own terms is sufficient to raise serious questions
about Obama's political commitments — questions that cry out for
attention from a responsible press.

In 2002, Micah L. Sifry, a former writer and editor with The Nation
magazine, published Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in
America, a book that contains what is probably our best account of the
rise and fall of the New Party. Although Sifry leaves us hanging on
the socialism question, his chapter on the New Party is more than
enough to raise disturbing questions about Obama's radicalism, and
about his ties to ACORN.

Sifry reports a quip by New Party co-founder, Daniel Cantor: "The
shorthand strategy for accomplishing all this is to get the Bruce
Springsteen, Lauryn Hill, and Pete Seeger vote united in one party."
The Peter Seeger vote does sound like shorthand for the old-time
socialist Left — but also for far-left-leaning baby boomers in
general. Bruce Springsteen and Lauryn Hill point to young blacks and
whites on the left, perhaps including, but not restricted to, openly
socialist sympathizers. In short, the New Party was a mid-1990s effort
to build a "progressive" coalition to the left of the Democratic
party, uniting left-leaning baby boomers with minorities, relatively
militant unionists, and "idealistic" young people.

Party Within a Party
In contrast to Ralph Nader's recent third-party campaigns, the New
Party's strategy was to work through "fusion." Fusion parties were
popular in the 19th century. Although these small parties had a
separate line on the ballot, they often endorsed one of the major
party candidates. That meant these third parties didn't have to act as
"spoilers" in close elections. Yet by constituting themselves as
separate entities and offering their endorsement as bait, fusion
parties tended to push the major parties further to the right or the
left. We see remnants of the old fusion-party pattern in New York
state, where separate Liberal and Conservative parties sometimes shift
elections by endorsing one or another major party candidate.

As the New Party's founders put it, they were looking for a cross
between the "party within the party" strategy favored by leftist
Democrats and the "plague on both your houses" stance later adopted by
the Naderites. That means Obama's New Party ties place him on the far
left end of the Democratic party, arguably with one foot outside and
to the left of the party itself.

Does this make Obama "socialist?" Maybe so, but according to Sifry,
the vague "New Party" name was chosen precisely to avoid such
ideological pigeonholing. Maybe that vagueness was designed to avoid
exposing the party as the socialist sympathizer it was. Or maybe the
name was a way of avoiding complex internal struggles between
competing ideological factions, some socialist and some not. (The
answer is "both of the above," I tend to think.) In any case, the New
Party was clearly far to the left of mainstream Democrats, and
according to Sifry, the party explicitly thought of itself as made up
of committed "progressives," rather than conventional "liberals." That
is entirely consistent with a famous 1995 profile of Obama by Hank De
Zutter, which portrays him as closely tied to ACORN, and holding a
world-view well "beyond" his mother's conventional liberalism.

To get a sense of where the New Party stood politically, consider some
of its early supporters: Barbara Dudley of Greenpeace, Steve Cobble
political director of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coaltion, and prominent
academics like Frances Fox Piven coauthor of the "Cloward-Piven
strategy" and a leader of the drive for the "motor-voter" legislation
Obama later defended in court on behalf of ACORN, economist Juliet
Schor, black historian, Manning Marable, historian Howard Zinn,
linguist Noam Chomsky, Todd Gitlin, and writers like Gloria Steinem,
and Barbara Ehrenreich. Socialist? Readers can draw their own
conclusions. At one point, Sifry does describe the party's goals as
"social democratic." In any case, the New Party clearly stands
substantially to the left of the mainstream Democratic party.

ACORN Connection
Unquestionably, ACORN was one of the most important forces behind the
creation of the New Party. According to Sifry: "Wade Rathke, ACORN's
lead national organizer, was in on the founding discussions that led
to the New Party, and the group's political director, Zach Polett,
also came to play a big role in guiding New Party field organizing for
the party [in Chicago and Little Rock]." In fact, Sifry portrays
ACORN's leading role in the New Party as the result of a conscious
decision by the organization to move into electoral politics in a more
substantial way than they had been able to solely through their
political action committee. In addition to Rathke and Polett, a key
early supporter of the New Party was Obama's closest ACORN contact,
Madeline Talbott.

While ACORN played an important founding role for the New Party
nationally, ACORN was clearly the main force behind the New Party
chapter in Chicago. In general, New Party chapters build around an
ACORN nucleus were the most disciplined and successful party outposts.
Nationally, the New Party's biggest wins were in Chicago, very much
including Obama's victory in his 1996 run for the Illinois state
senate. Chicago's New Party was actually formed around two core
elements, ACORN and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Local 880. Yet, as Sifry notes, SEIU 880 was itself an ACORN offshoot.

Together ACORN and SEIU 880 were the dominant forces in Chicago's New
Party. True, there was also participation by open socialists, but
these were not a majority of New Party organizers. You can certainly
argue, as libertarian blogger Trevor Louden has, that whether openly
or not, the New Party in Chicago and beyond was effectively socialist.
It's a powerful argument and worthy of consideration. After all,
according to Rutgers University political scientist Heidi J. Swarts,
ACORN's leaders see themselves as "a solitary vanguard of principled
leftists." So a party outpost built around ACORN would be a party
built around "principled vanguard leftists." Sounds pretty socialist
to me. Yet, as I've emphasized, we needn't resolve the "socialism"
question to conclude that the New Party, and particularly its Chicago
branch, was far to the left of the Democratic party, and largely under
the control of ACORN.

Consider "The People Shall Rule," a look at some of Chicago ACORN's
electoral efforts co-authored by Madeline Talbott, Obama's closest
ACORN contact and a key New Party supporter. In describing former
Chicago ACORN leader Ted Thomas's successful run for alderman, Talbott
stresses that, even after election, Thomas retained his ACORN ties.
Thomas was invited to retain his seat on ACORN's Chicago board, ACORN
members continued to treat him as a leader, and Thomas continued to
brainstorm and strategize with ACORN's other organizers. Talbott is so
busy detailing Thomas's continued links to ACORN that she doesn't even
bother to mention that Thomas actually ran on behalf of the New Party.
(See "NP Chair elected to Chicago City Council.")

As so often with ACORN, technically separate organizations are often
relatively meaningless designations for different branches of ACORN
itself. And in Chicago, the New Party was very much an ACORN-dominated
operation. Ted Thomas was a city alderman, de facto ACORN leader, and
New Party chair all at once. So Obama's ties to the New Party
represent yet another important, and still unacknowledged, link
between Obama and ACORN.

We already know that Obama's ties to ACORN's Madeline Talbott ran
deep. Less known is that Obama's links to Chicago ACORN/New Party
leader Ted Thomas were also strong. Thomas was one of a handful of
aldermen who stood with Obama in his unsuccessful 2000 race for
Congress against Bobby Rush. Obama is also had long-standing ties to
SEIU Local 880, an ACORN union spin-off and a bulwark of Chicago's New
Party. In his 2004 race for the Democratic Senate nomination, SEIU
Local 880 strongly endorsed Obama, citing his long history of support
for the group.

Revealing Tie
So the fact that Obama received the New Party's endorsement in his
first run for office in 1995–96 cannot be dismissed as insignificant.
On the contrary, Obama's ties to the New Party, and the New Party's
backers at ACORN (often the very same people), are long-standing,
substantial, and reveal a great deal about his personal political
allegiances. Because it was a fusion party, the New Party did not
require that all the candidates it endorsed be members. Yet the New
Party's endorsements were carefully targeted. There was no attempt to
endorse candidates in every race, or even to set up nationwide
chapters. Carefully selected races in carefully targeted cities were
seized upon — and only when the candidate fit the profile of a
decidedly left-leaning progressive Democrat. In this way, the New
Party set out to form a hard-left "party within a party" among the
Democrats.

More than this, we now have substantial evidence that Obama himself
was in fact a New Party member. We even have a photograph of Obama
appearing with other successful New Party candidates. Clearly, then,
it is more than fair to identify Obama with the hard-left stance of
the New Party and its ACORN backers. In her recent study of ACORN and
the Gamaliel Foundation, the two groups of community organizers to
which Obama was closest, Heidi Swarts describes their core ideology as
"redistributionist." Joe the Plumber take note. Whether formally
socialist or not, Obama ties with ACORN and its New Party political
arm show that spreading your wealth around has long been his ultimate
goal.

All this means that Barack Obama is far from the post-partisan,
post-ideological pragmatist he pretends to be. On the contrary,
Obama's ideological home is substantially to the left of the
Democratic-party mainstream, so far to the left that he has one foot
planted outside the party itself. And since the New Party Chicago was
essentially an electoral arm of ACORN, Obama's New Party tie, is yet
another example of his deep links to the far-left militant organizers
of that group. Obama's account of his limited ties to ACORN in the
third debate was clearly not truthful. Likewise, his earlier denials
of ties to ACORN have fallen apart.

At what point will the press force Obama to own up to the full extent
of his ties to ACORN? At what point will the press demand a full
accounting of Obama's ties to the New Party? At what point will the
depth of Obama's redistributionist economic stance be acknowledged?
Barack Obama is hiding the truth about his political past, and the
press is playing along.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTc3NzZkZDYxODZiZjE2OTg5YWRmNDkzM2U0YTIwZGQ=