I would specifically take Obama's New Party affiliations with a grain of salt.The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee , ACORN and the New Party were never explicitly Marxist. Noam Chomsky is perhaps the most celebrated member of the New Party-and he calls himself and "anarchist" or "libertarian socialist".
Who is the "real" Obama? My assessment is that Obama will do whatever he thinks necessary to either get re-election or die trying. He would literally rather die than go down as the Black, one-term, Jimmy Carter. I fully expect tensions to rise among Obama's base when his 2012 campaign ramps up—and the Obama administration needs to make some really hard decisions. I truly doubt he could, for example, carry Iowa again after a major amnesty.