McCain-Palin Freak Show backfires: Majority of Americans like the idea of sharing the wealth

McCain's Big Backfire: Majority of Americans Like the Idea of Spreading the
Wealth
By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet
Posted on November 1, 2008, Printed on November 1, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/105652/
John McCain and Joe the Plumber are campaigning for Barack Obama, and they
don't even know it. The more McCain has ramped up his attacks on Obama as a
"spreader of wealth," the more the country has lined up behind the
Democrat's plan to spread the wealth. If McCain's economic agenda was a gun
and his attacks on Obama's agenda the bullets, the old soldier would have
shot both his feet clean off a long time ago.

Watching the GOP's coordinated if increasingly delirious attacks on Obama's
economic plan, it's clear that the party is even further out of touch with
the America of 2008 than previously imagined. After eight years of
establishing and then extending America's lead as the most unequal of all
industrialized countries, Republicans thought they could deflect a national
groundswell of righteous anger by dusting off and hurling every insult in
the conservative arsenal, including old favorites "extremist," "radical,"
"Marxist" and "socialist." One suspects they are saving "anarchist" and
"Hessian" for McCain's last-gasp speech on Monday.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Republican
hammer-and-sickle-themed haunted house: Nobody showed. The McCain campaign's
attempts to smear Obama as a Trojan donkey for socialistic un-Americanism
have belly-flopped, if not backfired. Obama has not only maintained a stable
lead under the Republican barrage, he has increased his positives in the
traditionally Republican territory of taxes. The final national polls before
Tuesday all show a national hunger for national wealth redistribution
downward. An Ipsos/McClatchy poll finds that likely voters prefer Obama's
tax plan to McCain's by 8 points. Pew says Obama added to his edge on taxes
and the economy between mid-September and mid-October by 6 points, jumping
from 44 to 39 earlier to 50 to 35. On Oct. 30, Gallup released results
showing Americans favor Obama's style of wealth spreading by a whopping
58-to-37 margin.

It appears the nation's sanity and sense of fairness has reasserted itself
to wipe the floor with condescending GOP red-baiting.

It hasn't hurt that the GOP attacks have been absurd on their face. A
3-point increase in the top marginal income tax rate to 39 percent is not
easily morphed into the face of Pol Pot. For much of the 20th century, the
top income tax rate in the United States slid between 50 percent and 90
percent, peaking at 94 percent during the final two years of World War II.
Most Americans would agree that the mid-century rates were excessive, but
support for some kind of progressive tax curve remains widespread. Both Bill
Clinton and Al Gore ran winning campaigns promising to raise taxes on the
rich.

"The public has always supported moderately progressive taxation, so I don't
think McCain's pitch had much resonance unless he could convince people that
Obama would raise their taxes," says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center
for Economic and Policy Research. "Obama inoculated himself against this
attack by saying that he would cut taxes for 95 percent of the public.
Basically, McCain was trying to make things up, and most people didn't
believe him."

Charges of socialism are especially discordant coming from the McCain
campaign. The top marginal income tax rate held steady at 50 percent for
five years under McCain's hero, Ronald Reagan. His other hero, Teddy
Roosevelt, was a fierce and early booster for federal income and estate
taxes. And Sarah Palin? It wouldn't be all that surprising to see her turn
up at a commemoration of this year's 70th anniversary of the Fourth
International. As Hendrik Hertzberg noted in one of many recent pieces
debunking the newest GOP attack line, the redistributive principle is
practiced with particular gusto in Palin's Alaska, where the governor
spreads the oil wealth like creamy butter around the state's absorbent white
bread. "One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor," notes
Hertzberg, "is that she added an extra $1,200 to this year's (government)
check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269." Earlier this summer, Palin
boasted to journalist Philip Gourevitch, "Alaskans collectively own the
resources. We share in the wealth."

Like Alaskans, we're all socialist now, to an extent, and have been for a
long time. It's just a question of daring to speak the adjective's name,
which happens to describe hugely popular programs like Social Security and
Medicare. Watching McCain's socialist attack line flop, it's tempting to
think that the country is edging closer to the day when the word, stripped
of its Cold War baggage, no longer has the power to frighten Ohio. Another
element is the further eclipse of the culture war by economics. As the
country's shifting demographics grow over the divides opened up during the
1960s and '70s, attempts to bundle pinko economics with fears of godless
agents of chaos become increasingly meaningless.

The Right is aware of and worried about this growing de-contextualization of
the word "socialism." The counterrevolution against the New Deal was aided
by the presence of the Soviet Union as a running counterpoint. But it's now
almost 20 years after 1989. A generation has matured that never soaked up
any of the old propaganda. This generation has studied abroad and knows you
can Super-size it in Sweden. It has no memory of "Better Dead Than Red" and
can't imagine an elderly British logician making international headlines for
saying he'd rather crawl to Moscow on his hands and knees than die in a
nuclear war. Conservatives worry about this group much as arms controllers
worry that kids today don't understand the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
The right's fright over the post-Cold War generation's immunity to cries of
"socialism!" was expressed clearly in an Oct. 27 editorial in the Investor's
Business Daily titled "Defining Problems With Socialism for the Post-Cold
War Generation."

"John McCain has finally called Barack Obama's agenda by its proper name,"
it begins. "But if he assumes voters understand what he means when he uses
the word 'socialism,' he assumes too much. Sadly, most people under 60 in
this country went to schools and universities where socialism isn't
considered a bad thing."

Actually, those are two distinct groups -- those who don't understand the
word or its gradations, and those who do and wouldn't mind living under most
of them. What they have in common is that together they constitute a future
United States where the word "socialist" carries an ever-weakening stigma.

Whether we choose to reclaim or dispense with the word, its days as a
conversation stopper appear to be over. Over the last eight years, 90
percent of the new income generated has accrued to the top 10 percent, while
average family incomes have dropped $2,000. These numbers have engendered
bitterness on top of anxiety that has shifted the economic debate. If
Democrats get a chance to seek forceful redress in the coming years,
Republicans are sure to call Obama a socialist and much else besides. But
that's OK. Tuesday's election is going to show that when people are hurting,
they don't mind a little "socialism" -- just as long as it's pointed their
way.

Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/105652/


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