Deteriorating Living Conditions You Can Believe In

Remember Clinton’s debate line about Obama’s ties to “slumlord” Tony Rezko?  Since Rezko was mostly known for the corruption charges against him at the time, this line of attack didn’t really register with a lot of people and the use of the word slumlord was supposed to be seen as another example of some nefarious speaking in “code” about race.  It refers, of couse, to Rezko’s past as a private developer who took government subsidies and loans to manage low-income housing developments, which fell into disrepair and which he then abandoned for greener pastures. 

This Globe story about Obama’s support for subsidies to failed housing developers (who were also campaign contributors), including Rezko, is grist for Nader’s mill and could embarrass Obama with some very bad publicity.  This concluding passage says it all:

Jamie Kalven, a longtime Chicago housing activist, put it this way: “I hope there is not much predictive value in his history and in his involvement with that [development] community.”  

A lot of progressive, civil libertarian and conservative admirers of Obama hope that there is not much predictive value in Obama’s record on many of the policies they support.       

Update: It seems that I beat Mickey Kaus to the anti-Obama punch, but he appropriately makes up in rhetoric (“Obama’s Katrina”) what he lacked in timing.