OWS: Dems Should REALLY Jump on This
October 20th, 2011
Why? Because they are electoral gold. A recent survey found that participants in Occupy Wall Street are overwhelmingly political independents. These are not liberals, this is not the extreme left or the Democratic core. These are the independents–the people who decide elections. (They are also mostly college-educated people under 35 making less than $50,000 a year, though 30% of them are unemployed and 20% working part-time.)
Seriously, Obama, Democrats–not jumping on this bandwagon could be the stupidest thing you have ever done.
Of course, we often forget that Democrats are almost as often on the side of Wall Street as Republicans are…
You think OWS would embrace Obama and the Democrats? I have my doubts.
Well, OWS is still fringe and there are millions more low-information independents.
Plenty of OWS is LaRouchite / truthers / naderites / Greens too, so much of the movement is beyond sense.
Moving to the left is dangerous since you lose the muddled middle.
Basically, 2012 is going to come down to a few battleground states.
Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, assuming Obama loses FL, OH, IN.
People haven’t really internalized that the BIG mistakes were made 1995-2005.
The bailouts were in response to those big mistakes, and they just postponed things.
Any clueful leftist should have their hair on fire about how utterly scumfucking the Ryan-Boehner-McConnell axis is.
Though the really clueful would probably turn the way I have, and say let the conservatives just take over and finish the demolition job they started during their run of things last decade.
The idea is not for OWS to embrace Obama and the Dems as they are now–it is for Obama and the Dems (as I stated) to embrace the OWS people. And by that, I don’t just mean talk to them–I mean, embrace their values. Actually start prosecuting scores of bankers who caused this to happen; start with a tax hike on millionaires and then ratchet it up from there. Put regulations in place that will actually do a good job, and remove all the Bullshit loopholes that allow these assholes to legally rob pension plans blind.
In short, actually do stuff about it, so as to get that crowd behind you.
It’s not as if it’s a huge danger–even a majority of Republicans approve of higher taxes on millionaires. It would be a fantastic campaign if Obama prosecuted white-collar criminals and regulated the banks, while the Republican candidate defended the rich crooks.
The problem is, either Obama is in the same pocket as the Republicans, or he’s too busy trying to placate the far right–which will never give anything in return except abuse–to actually do the more liberal stuff that would placate the actual American voters themselves.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Obama is the piper.
The instinct of the politician would be to embrace populist rhetoric and plutocrat policies. This is Obama, by definition. The protest, then, is impart a protest against Obama’s actions. Obama will not abandon the check writers until the Occupists (Occupi?) can manifest real political power. This suggest tension between the two. I would look for Obama to seek to find a bone to throw them that doesn’t affect the check writers – something that looks big but substantively is small.
Substantively, I don’t see how the two groups can come together.
The occupist could transform into a political party, put forth candidates in every city they have had demonstrations. There are enough big money Matt Damon true liberals to fund the agencies of a new party but not put a wall of media advertising. But if the public is truly behind them, they could succeed anyway. I like the name Middle American Party (inferring representation of the middle class,the middle part of the country and independents),
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Obama’s tax plan was to return the top Clinton tax rate but keep the Bush tax rates where they are for everyone else.
This couldn’t get through Congress, because the Dems didn’t want to run on having “raised taxes”.
The fundamental issues with the economy are very deep, and the American people are just too collectively stupid to come around to face them.
Carter tried that in 1979, and look where it got him.
Most of us benefit from a strong dollar — we get lots of stuff from China, Mexico, and Japan at less cost, plus gasoline is under $4.
The trade deficit is a non-problem, now, but it is hollowing out this country.
But few people realize this. The powers running this country’s economy have bamboozled nearly everyone.
Trying to push Obama to the left when over half this country are the muddled middle isn’t necessarily a viable strategy for him to retain office.
The problem isn’t the politicians, the problem is us.
@Luis
This almost reads like a parody of something I would say. Maybe it is? LOL.
So, what about the previous counter-arguments? That Obama has always supported raising taxes for the rich, but it’s the filibustering Congress that held him up? That he wanted the Bush tax cuts to expire, but couldn’t place unemployment benefits in jeopardy?
Of course I would love to see Obama and the Democrats publicly embrace the Occupy movement, and they probably will during the height of the 2012 campaign (when it may be too little, too late). But that’s just a campaign strategy. I doubt Obama’s going to get anything of substance accomplished. (The current jobs bill is a good example of this.) Plus, it’z not going to look good to take an anti-corporate (and by extention, anti-Republican) campaign position when 4 years ago his campaign position was ‘bi-partisanship’.
Steve:
No, not a parody. And yes, Obama has tried to move in that general direction, but never far enough–always making a centrist move as the beginning of his negotiation, knowing he’d be pulled right. I approve of most every plan he’s put forward if it were to pass as originally written, as a necessary compromise, not as an opening move. But I don’t think anyone has accused Obama of being a firebrand liberal pushing all the way for the best interests of the people.
I always rationalized that Obama was at least something like that at heart, and was trying to be “reasonable” and just true to his ‘respecting all voices’ philosophy to too much of a fault.
The problem is, Obama is not what we hoped–a liberal–and now I don’t think he’s even what we figured–a liberal with really bad bargaining skills and too much desire to placate the opposition. If that were true, he could grow a spine, abandon the futile attempts to please the Republicans, and adopt a pro-people platform that would capture not only liberals but independents as well.
My point here is that while I still hope Obama will do this, I am daily less convinced that he wants to do this, and more and more fearful that he’s something more akin to a moderate Republican of, maybe, the late 90’s, and that he doesn’t want to embrace the OWS crowd. That maybe the cries about Obama having big-money ties just like the Republicans are less a part of the whole abuse-laden melange about his being a communist-socialist-fascist-nazi-post-colonial-Nigerian-dictator-whatever, and more about Obama being at least somewhat beholden to these influences, willingly or not.
I don’t know. My whole point is that Obama and the Dems should be jumping on the OWS bandwagon just as much if not more than Republicans jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon. That they’re not is one reason why I have less and less hope for OWS to accomplish anything big, because there is no one who has the ability to do anything who will jump in and pick up their cause, for opportunistic reasons or not.
I should add to that that I do not necessarily disapprove of everything Obama has done–quite the contrary. I simply don’t think it goes nearly far enough, and I don’t think he’ll ever do what he needs to do to really bring America back from the brink. At any other point in American history, Obama might be one of the greats. For what this time calls for, however, he’s just not doing what we need. He rescued us from the economic collapse Bush had driven us to–but fell short of restoring us, instead just halting the collapse midway.
Normally, a sheriff keeping people from getting killed is a sign he’s doing a good job. However, when there is a rampaging criminal gang destroying the town, the sheriff simply stopping anyone from getting killed, while admirable, is not enough–because the town is being destroyed and you’re not stopping that.
Obama is too busy trying to appease the gang to stop them from destroying the country. And the irony is, they’ll never be appeased. No matter what Obama does, the right wing will always despise him. As Sullivan points out, with Obama getting Osama, al-Awlaki, and Qaddafi within a six-month period, if he were a Republican he’d be on Mount Rushmore by now. What’s the point of trying to placate people who crap all over you for doing things they normally consider heroic?
To paraphrase a line from the movie I, Robot, Obama is the stupidest smart guy I have ever seen.
“That Obama has always supported raising taxes for the rich, but it’s the filibustering Congress that held him up? That he wanted the Bush tax cuts to expire, but couldn’t place unemployment benefits in jeopardy?”
Pretty much that. The economy wasn’t going to rise or fall on getting another $160B total out of the top bracket over 2011-2012, that wasn’t the right hill to die on in late 2010, after the Dems got shellacked at the polls, and the loss of the EUC extension would have been a massive shock to the economy.
and I don’t think he’ll ever do what he needs to do to really bring America back from the brink.
The core of the matter is Congress fucked up 2009-2010.
People looking at Obama are looking at the wrong place. He doesn’t have a vote in Congress, it’s Congress’ job to set the direction this country goes in, the President just runs things as they set up.
Obama was a nobody 10 years ago, he didn’t have the oomph of an FDR (with his 80% majorities) or LBJ (68 seats in the Senate in 1964) to get things done.
I think Obama has been playing a pick-your-battles thing, and I think this is proper.
This is a bitterly divided country and the muddled middle doesn’t want an angry black man on the TV all the time.
Not one person in a 1000 actually knows why we got where we are. Education is dismal and it’s only thanks to me being on the internet 24/7 for the past 4 years that I think I know what’s going on.
I didn’t know anything either until a year or two ago.
why I have less and less hope for OWS to accomplish anything big
First the Dems gotta win the House back. This fucked us over pretty bad.
Frankly, I don’t think the Dems will keep the Senate this time around. The electoral math is really against that.
What’s the point of trying to placate people who crap all over you for doing things they normally consider heroic?
That’s not Obama’s game. Obama has to win the moderate vote in Pennsylvania to be reelected. EVERYTHING he says and does has to play through that.
“The problem is, Obama is not what we hoped–a liberal–and now I don’t think he’s even what we figured–a liberal with really bad bargaining skills and too much desire to placate the opposition. If that were true, he could grow a spine, abandon the futile attempts to please the Republicans, and adopt a pro-people platform that would capture not only liberals but independents as well.”
Yes, but you’re talking about him needing to embrace the values of OWS. That’s not liberal, that’s anti-corporate.
You know I’m no fan, but even I will acknowledge that Obama believes in making taxes more progressive than they are now, and in putting restrictions on campaign donations by corporations, etc. But he was never Chomsky, and he’s not going to start now. In fact, it would be completely out of character for him to start championing a protest movement started by Adbusters.
Obama should say, “Where were you guys in 2009????”
Obama should say, “Where were you guys in 2009????”
They were giving him his high popularity numbers, that’s where they were. OWS formed once politicians stopped appealing to them altogether.