Our Dear Comrade

The Communist Party USA helped their “friend” Barack Obama win his 2004 US Senate primary race and hailed the result as a “victory for independent, grassroots coalition politics over money and machine politics.”
Obama was always connected to Illinois communists. As the late Marxist leader Manning Marable, wrote in the December 2008 issue of British Trotskyite journal Socialist Review;

What makes Obama different is that he has also been a community organiser. He has read left literature, including my works, and he understands what socialism is. A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists. There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years…

The CPUSA’s People Weekly World of March 27, 2004 makes it clear that the Party approved of Obama’s primary win and saw his campaign as inspirational.

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Not only did the Illinois Communist Party cheer Obama’s primary victory, they actively campaigned for it. “Immersed” in the campaign , according to Illinois CPUSA organizer John Bachtell.

Peoples Weekly World, April 14, 2004, page 10

There is little doubt that Obama would have won his Senate primary without Communist Party help. The question is – why did the communists single out Obama for special attention?
What did the communists know about Barack Obama in 2004, that most Illinois voters did not?
What does the Communist Party , which still loyally supports Obama to this day, know about the US president, that most American voters still do not?
Or do the communists support Obama simply because they believe in “hope” and “change”?

From New Zeal Blog