Barack Obama is not a socialist, because Barack Obama says so:

“I don’t know what’s next,” Obama, the presidential candidate, said at an outdoor rally. “By the end of the week, he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

This is not a duck.

But… um…

It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

Although the media’s revealed the dark secret that Joe Wurzelbacher is not a licensed plumber, the fact remains that Joe got Obama to drop the mask in a more succinct fashion than he has throughout the general election campaign. Even without this quote, what would you call Obama’s healthcare plan? Or his frequent attacks on a reduced capital gains tax as “billions of dollars for big oil,” or his promises to give “tax cuts” to people who don’t pay income taxes, or his demonization of deregulation?

so · cial · ism

–noun
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.