Reply #52: We HAVE been semi-corporatist for a long time.

[Jennicut]

If govt. is involved in supporting, helping, regulating and propping up businesses then that is considered part of the old fashioned term of corporatism. But we really don't discuss the history of it here at all. The United States has not been pure capitalism in a long, long, long time. Are we fascist? No. Are we heavily involved as a govt. with corporations? Yes. And that is not socialism either, as some on the right would have some think. Is it the new definition of coporatism? Perhaps. Also, if we look on the website Political Compass, most of the Dems and the Rethugs are not that far from each other.
Obama has never been anything other then what he was...a moderate in the terms of the United States political system.

"When examining the chart it's important to note that although most of the candidates seem quite different, in substance they occupy a relatively restricted area within the universal political spectrum. Democracies with a system of proportional representation give expression to a wider range of political views. While Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the wider political landscape of Europe. Similarly, Obama is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while elsewhere in the west his record is that of a moderate conservative. For example, in the case of the death penalty he is not an uncompromising abolitionist, while mainstream conservatives in all other western democracies are deeply opposed to capital punishment. The Democratic party's presidential candidate also reneged on his commitment to oppose the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He sided with the ultra conservative bloc in the Supreme Court against the Washington DC handgun ban and for capital punishment in child rape cases. He supports President Bush's faith-based initiatives and is reported in Fortune to have said that NAFTA isn't so bad. Despite all this, some angry emailers tell us that Obama is a dangerous socialist who belongs on the extreme left of our chart. In an apparently close race, genuine leftists McKinney and Nader may attract sufficient votes from Obama to deliver McCain to the Oval Office."http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008



To me, he never presented himself to be anything other then this. I don't get the outrage around here. He is what he has always been.