Campaign workers for Senator
and presidential candidate Barack Obama are under fire for displaying
a flag featuring communist hero Che Guevara. But Obama has his own controversial
socialist connections. He is, in fact, an associate of a Chicago-based
Marxist group with access to millions of labor union dollars and connections
to expert political consultants, including a convicted swindler.   

Obama’s socialist backing
goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the
Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an
Illinois state senate seat.  Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter
reported that Obama, as a state senator, showed up to eulogize Saul
Mendelson, one of the “champions” of “Chicago’s democratic left”
and a long-time socialist activist. Obama’s stint as a “community
organizer” in Chicago has gotten some attention, but his relationship
with the DSA socialists, who groomed and backed him, has been generally
ignored.     

Blogger Steve Bartin, who has been following Obama’s
career and involvement with the Chicago socialists, has uncovered a
fascinating video showing Obama campaigning for openly
socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Interestingly, Sanders,
who won his seat in 2006, called Obama “one of the great leaders of
the United States Senate,” even though Obama had only been in the
body for about two years. In 2007, the National Journal said that Obama had established himself
as “the most liberal Senator.” More liberal than Sanders? That is
quite a feat. Does this make Obama a socialist, too?  

DSA describes itself as the
largest socialist organization in the United States and the principal
U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. The Socialist International
(SI) has what is called “consultative status” with the United Nations.
In other words, it works hand-in-glove with the world body.  

The international connection
is important and significant because an Obama bill, “The Global Poverty
Act,” has just been rushed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
with the assistance of Democratic Senator Joe Biden, the chairman, and
Republican Senator Richard Lugar. The legislation (S.2433) commits the U.S. to spending
hundreds of billions of dollars more in foreign aid on the rest of the
world, in order to comply with the “Millennium Goals” established
by the United Nations. Conservative members of the committee were largely
caught off-guard by the move to pass the Obama bill but are putting
a  “hold” on it, in order to try to prevent the legislation,
which also quickly passed the House, from being quickly brought up for
a full Senate vote. But observers think that Senate Democrats may try
to pass it quickly anyway, in order to give Obama a precious legislative
“victory” that he could run on.     

Another group associated with
the SI is the Party of European Socialists (PES), which heard from Howard
Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, back in 2006.
Dean’s speech is posted on the official Democratic Party website,
although the European socialist parties are referred to as “progressive.”
Democrats, Dean said, want to be “good citizens of the world community.”
He spoke at a session on “Global Challenges for Progressive Politics.”  

Following up, in April 2007,
PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen reported that European socialists held a meeting
“in the Democrats HQ in Washington,” met with officials of the party
and Democratic members of Congress, and agreed that “PES activist
groups” in various U.S. cities would start working together. The photos of the trip show Rasmussen meeting
with such figures as Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Bernie Sanders, officials
of the Brookings Institution, Howard Dean, and AFL-CIO President John
W. Sweeney, a member of the DSA. The Brookings Institution is headed
by former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a proponent
of world government who was recently identified in the book Comrade J as having
been a pawn of the Russian intelligence service.  

The socialist connections of
Obama and the Democratic Party have certainly not been featured in the
Washington Post columns of Harold Meyerson, who happens not only to be a member
but a vice-chair of the DSA. Meyerson, the subject of our 2005 column, “A Socialist at the Washington
Post,” has praised convicted inside-trader George Soros for manipulating
campaign finance laws to benefit the far-left elements of the Democratic
Party. Obama’s success in the Democratic presidential primaries and
caucuses is further evidence of Soros’s success. Indeed, Soros has
financially contributed to the Obama campaign. 

It is not surprising that the
Chicago Democrat, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, has endorsed Obama. Schakowsky, who endorsed Howard
Dean for president in 2004, was honored in 2000 at a dinner sponsored
by the Chicago chapter of the DSA. Her husband, Robert Creamer, emerged
from federal prison in November 2006 after serving five months for financial
crimes. He pleaded guilty to ripping off financial institutions
while running a non-profit group.  Before he was convicted but
under indictment, Creamer was hired by the Soros-funded Open Society Policy
Center to sabotage John Bolton’s nomination as Ambassador to the U.N.  

After his release from prison,
Creamer released a book, Listen to Your Mother: Stand up Straight:
How Progressives Can Win, described by one blogger as the book that
was “penned in the pen.” A blurb for the book declares, “Some
people think that in order to win, Democrats need to move to the political
center by adopting conservative values and splitting the difference
between progressive and conservative positions. History shows they are
wrong. To win the next election and to win in the long term, we need
to redefine the political center.” 

In addition to writing the
book, Creamer is back in business, running his firm, Strategic Consulting
Group, and advertising himself as “a consultant to the campaigns to
end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, change America’s
budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform.” His
clients have included the AFL-CIO and MoveOn.org. In fact, his client list is a virtual who’s who of the Democratic
Party, organized labor, and Democratic Party constituency groups.  

Creamer’s list of testimonials comes from such figures as Democratic
Senators Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Harold Meyerson,
MoveOn.org founder Wes Boyd, and David Axelrod, a “Democratic political
consultant.”  

Axelrod, of course, is much
more than just a “Democratic political consultant.” He helped State
Senator Barack Obama win his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 and currently
serves as strategist and media advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign.

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