I’m afraid Harold Meyerson has, shall we say, “radically” misinterpreted, and/or misrepresented, my Corner post, “What’s So Strange About Socialism?” My intention was not to use Meyerson’s support of Obama’s policies to prove that Obama was a socialist. My point was simply that it is entirely possible for a socialist to participate in the ordinary give-and-take of contemporary American politics. The notion that you have to be a bomb-thrower or revolutionary to be a socialist is mistaken.
As to my reasons for believing that Obama is in fact a socialist, they come from over two years of research into the President’s political history. Meyerson can read them in my forthcoming book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. You can also get a preliminary idea of what’s in the book here and here.