Why Barack Obama’s nomination for the US presidency is historic

A 2007 Gallup poll showed 94 percent of U.S. respondents saying they would vote for a Black presidential candidate, while 88 percent indicated they would vote for a woman. A Newsweek poll released on May 26 showed roughly 70 percent of voters agreeing that the country is ready for a Black man to serve as president, up from just 37 percent in the 2000 election.

The political landscape has at long last shifted sharply away from the racist and sexist bigotry that have kept the popular majority so divided historically, ignoring their shared interests--and thereby allowing the political status quo to continue to flourish.

But this seismic shift in mass consciousness was nowhere to be seen in the Democratic primaries in recent months. On the contrary, as Hillary Clinton's quest for the Democratic nomination succumbed to the momentum of Barack Obama's, the multi-millionaire Clinton ludicrously posed as a populist spokesperson for that minority of stereotypical rural, racist whites who steadfastly refuse to vote for any Black candidate--complete with photo ops swilling shots of whiskey and posing on the back of pickup truck.

As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert noted, "There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way--any way--back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train."

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THE CLINTONS' last-ditch effort was in full display at the Democratic National Committee showdown on Saturday, May 31 at a Washington, D.C. hotel. Hundreds of bitter Clinton supporters protested inside and outside while the DNC's rules committee attempted to forge a compromise on the contested delegations of Florida and Michigan, which violated party rules by holding early primaries.

As the rules committee met, tensions ran high. Jeering and cheering filled the hotel ballroom, while "one woman, wearing a blue 'Team Hillary' shirt, shoved a man in a suit and tie wearing a small Obama button on his lapel," according to the New York Times.

Clinton's supporters, whipped into a frenzied and desperate attempt to rescue her long-doomed campaign, couched their complaints as an attempt to restore "democracy" to the primary contests. But the racial overtones were hard to ignore. Harriet Christian, one of Clinton's more unruly supporters, was captured on YouTube calling Obama an "inadequate black male" exploiting the "white woman running for president," as she vowed to vote for McCain in November, rather than cast a vote for Obama.

Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro had primed the pump for the angry Clinton mob just one day earlier, in a racist tirade that appeared as a Boston Globe op-ed piece. There, Ferraro clumsily fused the interests of feminists and white racists in an anti-Obama rant.

"Perhaps it's because neither the Barack Obama campaign nor the media seem to understand what is at the heart of the anger on the part of women who feel that Hillary Clinton was treated unfairly because she is a woman or what is fueling the concern of Reagan Democrats, for whom sexism isn't an issue, but reverse racism is," she wrote.

Ferraro made headlines in March when she told the Torrence, Calif., newspaper, the Daily Breeze, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." She later defended her comments by stating angrily, "I will not be discriminated against because I'm white." She resigned from Clinton's finance committee afterward, but clearly reserves her right to articulate the clarion call of white racists--all in the name of feminism.

"If you're white, you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist," she argued in the Globe. "They [racist whites] see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign, and no one calling him for it as frightening...[W]hen he said in South Carolina after his victory 'Our Time Has Come,' they believe he is telling them that their time has passed."

One of Hillary Clinton's scandal-ridden younger brothers, Tony Rodham, briefly escaped the DNC melee at a nearby Irish bar, where he seethed over a beer, as his pregnant wife and small children waited for him to finish. There, he told a Los Angeles Times reporter, "I'm just here to make sure Americans are represented by one vote for every person." (Rodham apparently does not appreciate that most democracies require more than one candidate to appear on the ballot, in contrast to Michigan's, where only Clinton's name was on offer among the major candidates.)

Rodham described himself as a "yellow-dog Democrat all my life," while threatening, "If my sister doesn't end up with the nomination, I gotta take a look at who I'm gonna vote for."

Lest there be any confusion about Rodham's political motives, his commitment to women's rights is highly suspect. His first wife, Nicole Boxer (daughter of California Sen. Barbara Boxer) was forced to sue him in court last year to retrieve $158,000 in back alimony and child support payments he had failed to deliver since they parted ways. Nevertheless, he played a prominent role in Clinton's fracas at the DNC, which consciously pitted the interests of '60s generation white feminists against the African-American candidate.

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HILLARY CLINTON'S entourage appeared to be above the fray on May 31, hundreds of miles away, relishing victory in the Puerto Rican primary. But the Clintons were the key architects of the thinly veiled race-based campaign strategy that escalated when Hillary Clinton's own presidential aspirations disintegrated after Iowa's caucuses delivered victory to Obama in January.

The Clintons appeared unable to gracefully relinquish control over the party apparatus that they have so ruthlessly abused over the last 20-odd years. Indeed, they were barely able to conceal their outrage that the First Lady of the so-called "first Black president" could be so easily upstaged by an actual Black presidential candidate.

Before embracing a classic "Southern strategy," the Clintons seem to have paid close attention to polls, such as one conducted by the Los Angeles Times in 2006 that reported only 34 percent of respondents said they could vote for a Muslim for president. Even prior to the January Iowa caucuses, at least two Clinton staffers forwarded an email reading, "Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential Candidacy. Please forward to everyone you know. The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level."

Clinton summarily fired the two staffers, yet the campaign theme remained, even as right-wing bloggers circulated rumors, as the Washington Post reported, claiming that Obama is "a 'Muslim plant' in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible."

Indeed, when Clinton was asked on March 2 in an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes whether she believes Obama is a Muslim, she replied, "No, no, why would I--there's nothing to base that on," while adding suggestively, "as far as I know." In contrast, John McCain chastised a radio host for repeatedly referring to "Barack Hussein Obama" during an interview.

Clinton's campaign denied leaking a widely circulated photo of Obama wearing a turban and also denied leaking a rumor that the young Obama had "spent at least four years in a so-called madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia" to Insight, an online conservative magazine. Insight editors insist their source was the Clinton campaign.

Opinion polls have reported in recent months that roughly one in 10 U.S. voters erroneously believe that Obama is a practicing Muslim. Moreover, a Pew Research Center survey released on March 27 showed that, while Obama has a highly favorable image among Democratic voters of all races, the breakdown shows his clear areas of demographic weakness.

The report noted that "white Democrats who hold unfavorable views of Obama are much more likely than those who have favorable opinions of him to say that equal rights for minorities have been pushed too far; they also are more likely to disapprove of interracial dating, and are more concerned about the threat that immigrants may pose to American values. In addition, nearly a quarter of white Democrats (23%) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim."

In early May, Hillary Clinton ventured into territory once limited to the likes of white supremacist George Wallace, telling USA Today that Obama's support has been weak among "hard-working Americans, white Americans"--invoking the racist stereotype of "lazy" African-Americans embraced by the most reactionary section of the voting population.

"There's a pattern emerging here," Clinton added, reinventing her waning campaign as a crusade for whites unable to stomach the prospect of voting for a Black presidential candidate.

In this process, Clinton has shifted the parameters of election-year politics backwards by several decades--away from the most urgent issues facing voters, which include falling living standards, lack of health care and the Iraq war--to a debate over whether a Black person has a democratic right to become president over the persistent opposition of a minority of white racists who happen to be "swing voters." She has deliberately stoked the mistaken and racist fear that Muslims threaten the principles of democracy.

Those pockets of racism are undeniable, and they continue to flourish in both so-called "blue" and "red" states. And the Clintons have courted all of them, from Boston to West Virginia.

While Hillary Clinton has undoubtedly been subjected to virulent sexism as she seeks to become president, the Obama campaign has played no role in contributing to it. In contrast, the Clintons must bear tremendous responsibility for embracing society's most backward elements in their cold-blooded quest to move back into the White House.

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IN A rare report on the uglier encounters faced by Obama campaigners, the Washington Post described on May 13:

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed--and unreported--this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

Tunkhannock Borough, Ind., Mayor Norm Ball wrote a letter to a local newspaper explaining his opposition to Obama with anti-Muslim racial stereotypes. "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country," he wrote. "There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim, and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him. No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

Obama supporters in Kokomo, Ind., (a historic bulwark for the KKK) have been chased by dogs and treated to a steady stream of racist invective. Obama's Vincennes office was vandalized on the eve of the Indiana primary, spray-painted with slogans such as "Hamas votes BHO" and "We don't cling to guns or religion--Goddamn Wright," as they proved otherwise.

Obama supporter Ray McCormick, who is white, arrived at the crime scene and took photos. "I thought, this is a big deal," he told the Washington Post. But when he notified the Obama campaign, he was told that the incident was not newsworthy.

All told, Obama's Indiana campaign offices received three bomb threats from disgruntled locals, but the campaign chose not to raise these as a campaign issue. Likewise, Obama's response to claims that he is a practicing Muslim has been reduced to repeated denial, rather than a defense of one of the world's largest religions, which is currently so disparaged in mainstream Western discourse. "Barack has never been a Muslim or practiced any other faith besides Christianity," states one of his fact sheets.

Obama is innocent of Ferraro's charge that he has played the "race card" during the primary season, but this is unfortunate. Obama's reluctance to forcefully challenge racism on the campaign trail has allowed the Clinton campaign to make the "Southern strategy" respectable once again, emboldening the racist white minority--in stark contrast to majority opinion in this changing political climate.

To be sure, there has been an anti-racist backlash against Clinton's white supremacist supporters. Even in Indiana, Clinton barely scored a victory, with an unimpressive 51 to 49 percent, while Obama attracted a strong percentage of white voters.

Now, as Clinton faces the inevitability of failure in her quest for the presidency, she is floating the possibility of being vice president on Obama's ticket. He should give her a middle finger, after surveying the wreckage the Clinton campaign has left behind.

U.S. politics are at a potential turning point, in which a nation founded upon slavery, with racism ingrained in its very foundation, could finally begin to correct its hideous past. This process is long overdue.

But realizing it requires a candidate willing to wage a frontal assault on the minority of white Americans from all social classes who still cling to racism--who the Clintons have consciously emboldened--while championing the civil rights of African Americans, Muslims, Latinos and Asians victimized by the system.

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IS BARACK Obama to the right of George W. Bush on Israel-Palestine?

That was the question across the Arab and Muslim world following Obama's declaration of support for an "undivided" Jerusalem at the annual meeting of the main pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington.

As Obama said to a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on June 4:

Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper. But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.

This hawkish statement contradicts official U.S. policy. Under the U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords of 1993 that launched an Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," the fate of Arab and mainly Muslim East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war, is to be decided through "permanent status" negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leaders. Since then, the Palestinian Authority has insisted that East Jerusalem must be the capital of the Palestinian mini-state envisioned under the Oslo agreement.

By appeasing the Israeli--and U.S.--right wing with his comments on Jerusalem, Obama was signaling that his administration wouldn't change the course set by George Bush.

That means further construction of the apartheid wall in the West Bank to Palestinians into ghettos, more carve-ups of the West Bank to consolidate Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, and continued support for the genocidal combination of sanctions and military strikes aimed at Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated areas.

This isn't speculation. Obama spelled it out for the AIPAC audience:

I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security. That starts with ensuring Israel's qualitative military advantage. I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat--from Gaza to Tehran.

Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As president, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade--investments to Israel's security that will not be tied to any other nation.

Obama's blank check for Israel is part of a plan to ensure that the Middle East remains thoroughly militarized under U.S. domination, even if some U.S. troops are shifted out of Iraq.

The primary target is to be Iran, which Obama accused of accelerating a nuclear weapons program. "Keeping all of our troops tied down indefinitely in Iraq is not the way to weaken Iran--it is precisely what has strengthened it," he said. "It is a policy for staying, not a plan for victory. I have proposed a responsible, phased redeployment of our troops from Iraq. We will get out as carefully as we were careless getting in."

In other words, very, very slowly.

The U.S. certainly wouldn't pull back from the region under an Obama administration. "The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat," Obama said, echoing Hillary Clinton's notorious comment that the U.S. would "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel. He added: "Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes, there are no alternatives to confrontation."

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THAT'S A lot of saber-rattling from a man often billed as an "antiwar" candidate. Apologists for Obama claim that he "had" to throw out red meat to AIPAC in order to appease the Israel lobby and shore up Jewish votes for the November election.

But Obama didn't have to go nearly so far in order to curry favor with AIPAC. While Obama certainly wants to bury memories of his once-friendly relationship with people like Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah and Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi, he could have accomplished that by other means--as he showed in his disposal of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his former church.

No, the explanation for Obama's hard-line stance lies elsewhere. He's running to become the leader of the world's most powerful and vicious imperial power, and he must demonstrate that--despite his past as a community organizer--he's sufficiently ruthless for the job. His audience isn't AIPAC, but the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Thus, Obama has staked out a right-wing stance not only on Israel, but against Cuba. As historian Greg Grandin pointed out, Obama recently met with right-wing Cubans in Miami and denounced Bush for neglecting Latin America and allowing "demagogues like Hugo Chávez" to step "into the vacuum."

"He even raised the specter of Iranian influence in the region, pointing out that 'just the other day, Tehran and Caracas launched a joint bank with their windfall oil profits,'" Grandin wrote.

Obama also made it clear that he would continue the U.S. policy of building up Colombia's right-wing government as a militaristic agent of the U.S. in the region. He pledged to "support Colombia's right to strike terrorists who seek safe havens across its borders," endorsing Colombia's deadly attack on rebels in Ecuador's territory in March, an action that was condemned by virtually all Latin American governments.

So much for "change." If elected, Obama may try to downsize and repackage the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But when it comes to aggressively pursuing U.S. imperial interests, there'll be no retreat unless resistance at home and abroad compels it.

DURING HIS campaign to win the Democratic nomination for president, Barack Obama used a line that never failed to draw applause from the largely antiwar crowds that turned out to hear him.

"I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place," he said. "That's the kind of leadership that I think we need from the next president of the United States. That's what I intend to provide."

Yet only days after clinching the nomination, here was the same Barack Obama performing one of the biggest rituals of conventional foreign policy thinking.

On June 4, Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, pledging his fealty to the Zionist regime and even calling for an "undivided Jerusalem" as Israel's capital. In other words, he endorsed the annexation of East Jerusalem, the Palestinian capital--a position that no government, including George Bush's, supports.

In an earlier appearance before that other favored foreign policy lobby, the far-right Cuban American National Foundation, Obama pledged to support the U.S. embargo on the island--a position that the Republican House of Representatives voted to rescind in 2005.

Some may be tempted to write off these appeals to the right as political pandering to insulate him from the Republicans' planned assault on him as "weak on defense." But the people who believe this are burying their heads in the sand.

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LET'S STIPULATE a couple of points at the top. First, Obama is running to be the commander of the world's biggest imperial power. He will fill that role--and not that of anti-warrior in the White House.

Second, aside from his well-publicized opposition to "the wrong war at the wrong time" in Iraq, there is nothing in his record to suggest that he plans any radical departures from the mainstream of the American foreign policy establishment.

To survey Obama's positions, it's well worth reviewing his almost year-old Foreign Affairs article, "Renewing American Leadership."

The main aim of Obama's presidency, it seems from this article, will be to regain the leadership of the world that George Bush's reckless and dumb foreign policy has squandered. "In the wake of Iraq and Abu Ghraib, the world has lost trust in our purposes and our principles," Obama writes. "We must lead the world, by deed and by example."

There's no disputing that the U.S. is more widely hated today than before Bush took office, and Obama's message recognizes that. And it's not surprising that Obama would urge "renewing American leadership," because "leading the world" has been the overriding U.S. foreign policy aim since at least the end of the Second World War.

"This century's threats," he writes, "are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past," including "weapons that can kill on a mass scale," "global terrorists who respond to alienation or perceived injustice with murderous nihilism," "rogue states," "rising powers," "weak states that cannot control their territory" and global warming.

Leaving aside the question of whether al-Qaeda is really the equal of Nazi Germany or thermonuclear holocaust--the last century's major threats--this is the standard issue from all sectors of the political establishment, including Bush.

"We must become better prepared to put boots on the ground in order to take on foes that fight asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale," Obama writes. "I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened."

In other words, it seems that the Bush Doctrine of endless war and unilateral intervention would not disappear under an Obama administration. It will simply be "repurposed" and given more lofty-sounding justifications.

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LEST ANYONE think that this kind of interventionism is just campaign rhetoric, one should consider who Obama's chief foreign policy advisers (and likely authors of the Foreign Affairs article) are.

They include Anthony Lake, a one-time protégé of Henry Kissinger. As Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Lake devised the main strategy for U.S. intervention in the Balkans, including the NATO bombings of Serbia and aiding Croatia's ethnic cleansing of Serbs, which ultimately led to the 1999 NATO war.

Lake and another ex-Clintonite, Susan Rice, co-authored a Washington Post op-ed in which they argued for unilateral U.S. intervention in the Darfur region of Sudan: "The United States acted without UN blessing in 1999 in Kosovo to confront a lesser humanitarian crisis (perhaps 10,000 killed) and a more formidable adversary."

Beyond them are a number of ex-Clinton advisers, including Gregory Craig, who oversaw State Department policy planning around the expansion of NATO and the decision by the Clinton administration to endorse "regime change" in Iraq.

Another Obama adviser was Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard history professor who is a leading advocate of "humanitarian intervention" around the world. Power was what liberal blogger Joshua Micah Marshall called Obama's "Condi Rice"--that is, she played the same role in schooling Obama on foreign policy that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice played in training candidate George Bush in 1999 and 2000. Although she was forced to resign from the campaign after calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a "monster" in print, Power's influence is still heavy.

A second Harvard academic in the Obama brain trust is Sarah Sewell, who collaborated with Gen. David Petreaus in updating the army's counterinsurgency manual. Sewell advised Petreaus on human rights in counterinsurgency.

"Her impact on the thinking about the war and the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been significant, and not without cost," Army counterinsurgency expert Lt. Col. John Nagl told American Prospect. "She has shown, in my eyes, great moral courage. I think Senator Obama is listening to someone who has thought long and hard about the use of force, and who understands the kinds of wars we're fighting today."

Besides these bureaucrats and intellectuals are a coterie of generals and other ex-military types who have lent their names to the Obama campaign. One is Jonathan Scott Gration, a two-star Air Force general who commanded a task force in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

While Gration has endorsed Obama's stated support for withdrawing troops from Iraq, he has also hedged on this position. "If it's very clear that the al-Maliki government is making significant progress, that we're turning the tide, it would be crazy not to re-adjust" the plan to withdraw, he told the New York Sun.

As Anthony Arnove pointed out in a recent Socialist Worker interview, "People who believe Barack Obama will end the occupation of Iraq are likely in for a rude awakening. Despite talking about withdrawal from Iraq, his plan would keep troops in the country for years to come, likely well beyond his potential first term.

"Obama has also left open the possibility that if he reduces the overall troop levels in Iraq--something that from a military standpoint is very likely, given how overstretched the United States is now--he would increase the number of mercenaries in Iraq."

As media speculation about Obama's vice presidential short list began, Team Obama made sure that the name of Ret. Gen. James Jones--one-time Marine Corps commandant and Supreme Allied Commander in NATO--was thrown into the mix. Jones, like Obama, has called for the U.S. to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Finally, if Obama's Middle East policy remains fairly conventional, that might be because one of the most conventional Middle East foreign policy hands in the U.S. establishment is advising him. Dennis Ross, special Middle East adviser to both Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is encouraging Obama to pursue diplomatic interactions with Iran and Syria.

But this is hardly the "path to peace" in the Middle East that Obama's supporters might hope for.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon, "Members of Sen. Obama's Middle East team, however, said they believed Damascus should be tested diplomatically because success could undermine Syria's military alliance with Iran. They said such a development could drastically shift the power balance in the Middle East while stanching the flow of arms to Hezbollah and Hamas. Syria also could become a partner in stabilizing Iraq, they say."

In the Middle East, as in the rest of the world, Obama's foreign policy might mark a change from the disastrous and incompetent policies that the Bush administration has pursued. But the change will be one of style and form, not one of substance and content.

Commenting on Obama's "fawning" speech before AIPAC, Israeli analyst Uri Avnery wrote that Obama's "dizzying success in the primaries was entirely due to his promise to bring about a change, to put an end to the rotten practices of Washington and to replace the old cynics with a young, brave person who does not compromise his principles. And lo and behold, the very first thing he does after securing the nomination of his party is to compromise his principles."

Avnery is only partly right. Obama isn't betraying his principles. Those are his principles.

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BACK IN January, at one of the Democratic presidential candidates' debates, Barack Obama took one of his few open shots at Hillary Clinton's past as a shill for shady corporations. "While I was working [as a community organizer in Chicago]...watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas," Obama said, "you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."

It was a point that deserved to be made more often. Clinton's remade campaign image as a populist fighting for the "little guy" was in stark contrast to her long history as a fixture of the Democratic Party establishment and defender of corporations like Wal-Mart.

But maybe Obama had his reasons for keeping quiet about the Beast of Bentonville.

With the nomination finally in hand, Obama announced he was adding a team of political advisers straight out of the pro-corporate, pro-military mainstream of Clintonism.

And to head his economic team, he chose Jason Furman--best known to labor activists for writing a 2005 article defending Wal-Mart as a "progressive success story" and denouncing the efforts of union-backed groups like Wal-Mart Watch to expose the retail giant.

Furman's appointment was consistent with a series of right turns by Obama. The day after he claimed victory following the last Democratic primaries on June 3, Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where he committed himself to an undivided Jerusalem, which isn't even the position of the Bush administration. At a Father's Day speech, he renewed his blame-the-victim criticisms of Black men as being responsible for the problems of the Black community.

Of course, it's the common wisdom of Democratic Party leaders that their presidential candidate needs to move toward the "center" as a general election gets underway. But Obama--who did say, once upon a time, that he would be a different kind of Democrat--is seeming more and more like a car whose steering wheel is stuck in one direction: turning right.

Obama's latest lurch came after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its 5-4 decision barring executions of those convicted of child rape. Obama criticized the ruling--which meant lining up with the right-wing extremist wing of the court: John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

On the issue of the death penalty, Obama likes to associate himself with the Illinois moratorium on executions declared by former Gov. George Ryan while Obama was still a state senator. At one Democratic debate, for instance, he talked about the "broken system" that "had sent 13 innocent men to death row."

There is no reason to believe that the justice system is any less broken when it comes to crimes other than murder--and Obama knows it. But he and his advisers apparently thought it was more strategic to sign up with the absurd attack on the Supreme Court for committing "abuse of judicial authority," in the words of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

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THE CHOICE of Furman to lead his economic team underlines just how far Obama is from the progressive icon his supporters believe him to be.

Furman is a protégé of Robert Rubin, the Wall Street banker who shaped Clintonomics in the 1990s to serve the pro-business, neoliberal agenda.

In 2006, Furman was selected to head the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, a think tank founded by Rubin to press for free trade and balanced budget policies. On the advisory council of the Hamilton Project are Rubin and fellow Citigroup executives, as well as prominent hedge fund bosses like Eric Mindich of Eton Park Capital Management and Thomas Steyer of Farallon Capital.

Obama was the keynote speaker at the ceremony launching the Hamilton Project. He praised its leaders for their willingness to "experiment with policies that weren't necessarily partisan or ideological."

No one would confuse Furman with a radical. In a Washington Post op-ed last year, he argued for a decrease in the tax rate on corporations, provided loopholes in the tax code are closed. "We should consider," he wrote, "tax reform in the classic 1986 mode"--that is, tax policy as defined under Ronald Reagan.

But Furman went above and beyond the call in a 2005 paper, titled "Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story," where he argued that the low-wage, no-benefit jobs created by the aggressively anti-union Wal-Mart were the price to pay so low-income Americans could have a place to buy goods at low prices.

As if the example set by Wal-Mart and emulated by other corporations wasn't one of the main reasons why U.S. workers have to scramble to find bargain-basement prices. By Furman's logic, every strike for better wages is a blow to the interests of the working class as a whole--and an injury to one must be a victory for all.

In a Slate.com debate about the tactics of groups organizing against Wal-Mart's abuses of workers and customers alike, Furman clearly delighted in using the same smears against liberals employed by the likes of Karl Rove.

"The collateral damage from these efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits is way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony," Furman wrote.

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FURMAN ISN'T the exception, but the rule on a team of economic advisers to Obama that comes from, as author Naomi Klein puts it, "the left side of a spectrum that stops at the center-right."

For example, there's Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago economics department--though he's better known these days for having met with Canadian government officials to assure them that the Obama campaign's previous anti-NAFTA rhetoric "should be viewed as more political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

The UC economics department, of course, is notorious as the home of Milton Friedman and the high priests of neoliberalism and corporate globalization. Goolsbee comes from the Democratic wing of the department, but he still worships the free market, and expects the same of the presidential candidate he supports. "If you look at his platform, at his advisers, at his temperament," Goolsbe said of Obama to one reporter, "the guy's got a healthy respect for markets."

As Klein pointed out in the Nation, the neoliberal dogmas of the "Chicago school" are increasingly discredited because of the damage they have caused--to the extent that "Friedman's name is seen as a liability even at his own alma mater. So why has Obama chosen this moment, when all illusions of a consensus have dropped away, to go Chicago retro?"

The question is the answer. For all his talk about change, Obama is showing in such actions his commitment to an economic program that is acceptable to Wall Street and Corporate America.