An Insight Into Obama

Ezra Levant: What if Obama were white?

Posted: January 09, 2008, 11:41 AM by Marni Soupcoff
Filed under: Ezra Levant

Barack Obama -- the junior Senator from Illinois who is now the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination -- had a white mother and a black father, and his blackness has dominated media coverage of his campaign. He has a policy platform, but in the eyes of many media commentators being black is his platform.

If Obama were white -- or if the media were colour-blind -- what would the news look like instead?

We might learn that in the three years since Obama was elected to the Senate, he's become one of America's most left-wing politicians. In 2006, the non-partisan National Journal tracked 84 key Senate votes. On economic issues, they ranked Obama the most socialist senator, tied with arch-liberals like Ted Kennedy. Others share that assessment: The conservative National Taxpayers Union gave Obama an "F" while big labour unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) gave him a 92% grade.

Obama is extremely liberal on social issues, too, consistently scoring a perfect 100% from the National Abortion Rights Action League and from the NAACP, which advocates racial hiring quotas.

Overall, in three categories --economic, social and foreign affairs -- National Journal scored only nine senators more liberal than Obama.

He has positioned himself as an anti-war candidate. Not just anti-war, but anti-troops: Last August, he suggested the U.S. effort in Afghanistan consisted of "air-raiding villages and killing civilians." His major foreign-policy speech on Iraq proposed recalling U.S. troops and replacing them with soldiers from Saudi Arabia and China.

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