Obama is the Democrats' common sense 'liberal'

[Kingstree]

When Barack Obama announced his strategy for combating some of the most intractable problems afflicting urban blacks, he invoked the name of Robert F. Kennedy, the New York senator who was assassinated during his 1968 campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

(Photo -- Obama: The new Democrat? / AP)

Kennedy, he said, looked at the poverty that wracked the Mississippi Delta and asked reporters, "How can a country like this allow it?"

But as Obama, the Illinois senator who hopes to become the Democratic Party's standard bearer in the 2008 presidential election, reeled off what he believes needs to be done to better the lives of urban blacks, I thought of another Kennedy.

Obama's prescription for healing impoverished urban communities is a mix of government programs. He pledged to link increases in the minimum wage to the cost of living index, to increase federal funding for education, and to provide affordable health care to all Americans.

Then Obama tempered his call for increased spending on social programs with an acknowledgment that some earlier ones didn't work.













http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/07/obama-is-the-de.html#more

[wyldwolf]

1. DLC/Clinton circa 1992, DLC/Tim Kaine 2005

Same message, different package.