This despite evidence that Obama was heavily involved in the New Party in 1995 and according to New Party News of Spring 1996, page 1, was a bona fide New Party member (see below).
from link in article, Wikapedia
--Strong in the mid to late 1990s the New Party was an electoral alliance dedicated to electing leftist candidates to office-usually through the Democratic Party. Two organizations formed the backbone of the New Party-the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the US's largest radical organization, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ).
In Chicago, the New Party consisted mainly of ACORN, Democratic Socialists of America, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Committees of Correspondence (CoC). A breakaway from the Communist Party USA, CoC worked closely with DSA and many activists were members of both organizations.
The progressives are the Democratic Socialist party , working through the Democratic party. (the bribes and threats were progressive socialist against Democrats.) We are being transformed by the Democratic socialist party. From their web site--reads like current administrations agenda
-- The Political Perspective of the Democratic Socialists of America
--We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.
--The fundamental task of democratic socialists is to build anti-corporate social movements capable of winning reforms that empower people.
--In the United States, we must fight for a humane public policies that will provide quality health care, education, and job training and that redirect public investment from the military to much-neglected urban housing and infrastructure. Such policies require the support of a majoritarian coalition of trade unionists, people of color, feminists, gays and lesbians and all other peoples committed to democratic change. Our greatest contribution as American socialists to global social justice is to build that coalition, which is key to transforming the power relations of global capitalism.
---Socialists have historically supported public ownership and control of the major economic institutions of society -- the large corporations -- in order to eliminate the injustice and inequality of a class-based society, and have depended on the the organization of a working class party to gain state power to achieve such ends. In the United States, socialists joined with others on the Left to build a broad-based, anti-corporate coalition, with the unions at the center, to address the needs of the majority by opposing the excesses of private enterprise.
---Social Redistribution. --the shift of wealth and resources from the rich to the rest of society--will require:
1.--massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs,income maintenance and infrastructure rehabilitation, and 2.--a massive shift of public resources from the military (the main user of existing discretionary funds) to civilian uses.
Although such reforms will be very difficult to achieve on a national scale in the short term, their urgency increases as income inequality intensifies. Over time, income redistribution and social programs will be critical not only to the poor but to the great majority of working people.
The defense and expansion of government programs that promote social justice, equal education for all children, universal health care, environmental protection and guaranteed minimum income and social well-being is critical for the next Left.
WHERE WE STAND DSA
Election agenda
--Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end. Where third party or non-partisan candidates mobilize such coalitions, democratic socialists will build such organizations and candidacies. However, to democratize U.S. electoral politics - whatever its party form -requires serious campaign finance reform both within and without the Democratic Party.