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There is nothing distinctly Marxist about him, though. He's certainly a liberal, but again that's quite a different thing than being "Marxist."

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And?

Youthful vulgar Marxists are a dime a dozen, and it's really the biggest cliche there is. I'm not sure it imparts any special knowledge or street cred beyond being an indicator of naivete and lack of critical engagement in the face of theoretical paradigms. Who claims to be a "Marxist" anymore anyway, it's kind of an archaic term (I'm thinking of mostly academia here, where even people sympathetic to Marx don't usually claim to be "Marxist" without some form of qualifier, just because his influence has morphed into other things and split off into different schools, and the world itself, which Marx was attempting to describe, has changed since).

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

Well, 'youthful Marxists' weren't all that common at Iowa State University when I was there (ok, they were certainly a few of them at University of Iowa, but not at ISU), so it seemed fairly exceptional at the time.

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Well, as the NYTs/Kristol OP-ed I linked to does a pretty good job of explaining, it really more about how he views the world.

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He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And its not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.

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Maybe you didn't get out as much as some of the other students. At neighboring UIUC, according to old professors, the school cancelled final exams and shut down the campus in the spring of 1970 due to protests. That, in addition to national guard troops having to run through town on a regular basis.

Today, there are still regular protests over hate crimes, the Iraq war, and Chief Illiniwek. We don't force the national guard to come out, but there's still plenty of liberalism and likely, "Marxist"-sounding arguments.

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...but it is easy to scare the citizenry into your Neo Con war...right Mr Kristol?

This is the same William Kristol of the Weekly Standard..a publication that acted as a White House mouth piece in the days leading up to the Iraq war.

...yes, the war...that has now resulted in over 4,000 American dead and many thousands more maimed physcially and mentally...many of whom are from small-town America.

Mr Kristol as what Obama has down for America....well may be Mr Kristol should explaing to small town America what he has down for America.

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I know logic isn't everyone's high suit, but whatever your disdain for Mr. Kristol, it does nothing to diminish the arguments he makes. It doesn't change Obama's world view.

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Are you seriously suggesting (as Kristol is) that one sentence spoken by Obama undermines everything he has said about religion over the last few years? Is that logical?

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Bill Kristol is a massive tool. George Bush could eat a kitten on national TV and Kristol would be on Foxnews 5 minutes later arguing that it's good for the country.

He's kind of fun to watch when he's on the daily show, though, as Jon Stewart has a way of breaking his guard down with humor. He'll often get him to laugh at the absurdity of his own spin at times, even while he's spinning it.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
Which still doesn't make him wrong about Obama.

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Which seems really cheap to me. He wants to mud sling and link Obama with Marx, but at the same time he doesn't want to have to "own" it by doing it in a direct manner (which, I suspect he does because he knows that there's really no conceivable way that he could credibly argue that Obama is himself "marxist" or that his ideas are themselves unique to Marxism).

The basic thrust of his argument is ultimately just the same old "Obama is an elitist!" -only repackaged with Marxist innuendo.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Which seems really cheap to me. He wants to mud sling and link Obama with Marx, but at the same time he doesn't want to have to "own" it by doing it in a direct manner (which, I suspect he does because he knows that there's really no conceivable way that he could credibly argue that Obama is himself "marxist" or that his ideas are themselves unique to Marxism).

The basic thrust of his argument is ultimately just the same old "Obama is an elitist!" -only repackaged with Marxist innuendo.

It's interesting, I think this really has less to do with Kristol mudslinging' and much more to do with the fact that the San Fran event was the one time we caught Obama being very candid with a group of supporters 'off camera'.

I think the public Obama, based on his well scripted speeches, is beginning to be seen at odds with the private Obama, at least based on his own biographies, his associations, his very slim legislative work, and the occasional candid comment. Perhaps it is too much to glom onto this one comment, but we really don't know much more about the man.

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The idea that Obama is a closet Marxist and elitist when nobody is looking is at least an interesting conspiracy theory.

Truth is that if you spent several years as a University of Chicago professor, you are going to have some elitist mannerisms- simply for hanging out in that culture for so long. Most Senators tend to behave that way behind the scenes, too.

At the end of the day, though, Obama spent most of his professional career as a humble community organizer and state senator. It's highly likely that his experience is more reflective of his true self than whatever minor mannerisms the Right can point out.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

Well, Obama actually appears to be very calculating in his political decisions; he even writes about this fairly openly. I think his past work is more reflective of his own ambitions than any particular political philosophy.

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His past work may very well have been part of a calculated plot, but no human being is going to waste several years of their life doing something they can't stand doing and hanging out with people whom they consider totally beneath them.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
What period of his life did he supposedly do this?

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Between the ages of 24 and 27- a little over three years.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Between the ages of 24 and 27- a little over three years.

That hardly seems to be an overwhelming amount of time to work the streets with the little people until Harvard law school.

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I think it's a lot of time. I've spent a little under a year at my current job, and if the people I worked with were snobs, I probably would have found other employment by now. Both community organizers and financial programmers have jobs that are often difficult and involve long hours. (The community organizer's job being moreso on both counts.) It's difficult to stay at that job for long if you don't like the people you work with.

Besides that of course, having spent some of my early years on the south side of Chicago, being a snob down there isn't exactly good for your health. Seeing as Obama hasn't been a gunshot victim, he apparently has two things that disqualify him from being a snob.

Three years is a long time to stay at that job. That's perhaps 1/10th of the career of a typical Ivy Leaguer- and maybe three out of the best ten years of any person's life.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

Do you just make these things up as you go along?

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Apparently, you've forgotten what it's like to be in your 20's.

I don't think any 24 year-old wants to look back and say, "Wow. Those three years of my life got me from Point A to Point B."

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Apparently, you've forgotten what it's like to be in your 20's.

I don't think any 24 year-old wants to look back and say, "Wow. Those three years of my life got me from Point A to Point B."

Believe it or not, not all twenty somethings are slackers. And one hardly stumbles into Harvard Law school; it takes a bit of forethought.

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The path of least resistance into Harvard Law School would have been to take the job at the investment bank that he had been offered.

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The path of least resistance into Harvard Law School would have been to take the job at the investment bank that he had been offered.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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The path of least resistance into Harvard Law School would have been to take the job at the investment bank that he had been offered.

Not necessarily; Harvard, being the liberal school it is, loves those who put in perfunctory socially conscious service before moving on to wealth and power.