Of Course Social Security is on Obama's Hit List

Liberal Obama Loyalists (LOLs — call them losers for short) are rushing to endorse Obama assurances that, contrary to press reports, Social Security and other Depression-era social safety net institutions are not in his sights. Do we really need to argue the case against Obama still? Obama is a Clinton Democrat. Social Security was on Clinton's hit list, it's on Obama's. Likewise, it is on the hit lists of Joseph Lieberman, Charles Schumer, Barney Frank, Ben Nelson and most Democrats.

When are liberals and progressives going to figure this out? The Democratic strategy for 30 years has been to out-Republican the Republicans. The dividing line, to the extent that there is one, has been on social issues like abortion and gay rights — not on economic issues, not on military issues. Had Clinton not gotten embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, he would have moved aggressively to privatize Social Security, many of his 'liberal' economic advisers (like Robert Rubin) advocated.

Similarly, when Obama was (supposedly) tackling American health insurance issues, he excluded all single-payer advocates and most (perhaps all) organized labor representatives from the discussion. We now know that even when he was publicly supporting the public option during the campaign, we was in fact privately and personally opposed.

If Obama had been on the political stage 40 years ago, people would have marveled agape at a Black Democrat who was (and is) more conservative than Richard Nixon or most Republicans before George W. Bush. Obama is significantly more conservative than Nixon, George H. W. Bush and Reagan on a number of issues.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama hit on a winning strategy of enlisting the support of many disaffected liberals and progressives. Now, his lies are laid bare. He knows he cannot win out support again (except for delusional diehards who forgive or overlook his wrongdoing). Instead, Obama is moving to claim more conservative voters, which is where is natural sympathies lie anyway.