Eugene Robinson: The Occupy Windfall

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_occupy_windfall_20111017/

The Occupy Windfall
Posted on Oct 17, 2011

By Eugene Robinson


“Defend Wall Street” is not likely to be a winning campaign slogan in 2012. For Republicans, this is an obvious problem. For President Obama and the Democrats, it’s a golden—if largely undeserved—opportunity.

snip//

This week’s New Yorker has a laugh-out-loud cover illustration: Top-hatted bankers march down Wall Street, carrying protest signs that say “Keep Things Precisely As They Are,” “Leave Well Enough Alone” and “I’m Good, Thanks.” That’s the danger for Republican candidates. That’s what they risk sounding like.



Yet the leading GOP presidential contenders want to scrap the Obama administration’s modest Wall Street reforms. Perhaps they believe that giving the architects of the 2008 crisis more latitude and less oversight is a great idea. Most voters, I’m confident, will disagree.

So Democrats are cautiously embracing the Occupy Wall Street protests and adopting the demonstrators’ rhetoric—for example, emphasizing the gulf between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the remaining 99 percent. In remarks Sunday at the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Obama spoke of King’s commitment to economic justice.

snip//

By calling attention to this unholy alliance of financial power and political power, the Occupy Wall Street protests struck a nerve. The Republican Party is trapped on the wrong side of this issue. Democrats should be moving boldly, not timidly, to claim the issue of economic justice as their own.

[MADem]

1. That illustration is a scream! So succinct!!!! +1!!! nt

[Tunkamerica]

2. We are not the 90%

[bread_and_roses]

3. The real meat of the article - and why Ds are irrelevant to OWS

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_occupy_windfall_20111017

If Democrats reap a political windfall from Occupy Wall Street, it will not be richly deserved. While it is true that they have been better than the Republicans on issues of economic fairness, that’s not saying much. Although Obama is disliked by many on Wall Street for his rhetoric about how “millionaires and billionaires” need to pay “their fair share” in taxes, the fact is that he decided not to seek fundamental reforms.

It is also a fact that Wall Street is a major source of campaign financing for both parties. At present, Wall Street donors are giving heavily to Romney—a money man by trade who once headed Bain Capital. In July, however, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that of the $35 million that had been collected this year by Obama’s top-tier fundraisers, one-third came from the financial industry. Apparently, animosity is no match for self-interest.

You could replace the top hats in the cartoon with our D millionaire "Representatives" and it would be just as relevant. And anyone with a single functioning brain cell knows it.

http://www.alternet.org/story/152761/occupy_wall_street_is_a_movement_too_big_to_fail/?page=entire

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

I sure hope Chris Hedges is right - that there is no danger of co-option. Unions, Ds, can join OWS - OWS can't join them and retain any legitimacy. And the Ds can't "join" OWS without giving up their ties to the Corporatocrcacy and uber-rich. Which I can't see them doing. I would love to be pleasantly surprised, but am not holding my breath with "hope."

[Hutzpa]

5. Look it's a little bit early but

Fuck Wall Street, during the 2008 election they invested heavily in the John McCain campaign and look how that turned out, they will jump
ship once they see Romney is a waste of time just as any of the republican candidates.

They started out not donating to the Obama campaign during the last election until they started seeing huge turn out after turn out that was
when they decided to donate to the Obama campaign, as a matter of fact those donation came from individuals working at wall street, not
major organization as the republicans or as this article would like us to believe.

The problem is some democrats have become very lazy in raising funds and has become over reliant on the republican method of raising funds
for campaigns. The democrats will always have a case to make to the public just that there are those within the party or should I say from red
states that think it is ok to take money from corporation while screwing the rest of us, they too can rile up the people just as Obama by simply
stating the facts. They employ these inefficient campaign staffs that sits on their asses and lazily wait on easy money to come in from corporation, that is the problem.

[polichick]

6. imo the hope is that OWS might pull the party to the left and help us purge the fake Dems.

[flpoljunkie]

4. And, right on time, WJC's pollster Doug Schoen warns Obama, Dems not to side with OWS in WSJ op-ed

(Schoen sent one of his colleagues out who selected 200 OWS protestors to interview. Does that sound random to you? Schoen, not surpisingly, ignores other polls which show majority support for the OWS protestors. Interesting picture of the protestors chosen for this article.)

Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd
In interviews, protesters show that they are leftists out of step with most American voters. Yet Democrats are embracing them anyway.

By DOUGLAS SCHOEN


Getty Images
'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrators in the financial district of New York

President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election.

Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that "the protests you're seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don't seem to play by the same set of rules." Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.

Yet the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.

The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

more Schoen bullsh*t here...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576637082965745362.html

[tavalon]

7. The Democratic politicians can follow along with us

They'll not lead this one, they missed that opportunity and we won't allow them, Obama especially, to coopt the movement.

[Tarheel_Dem]

8. Are you an organizer? Let's be honest, as soon as the weather changes, so will

attendance. ;)

[tavalon]

10. Even if it drops off in the rest of the country,

if we support OWS through the winter, in the spring, it will swell again and it will be time for General Strikes. They want to wait us out and now that the New York movement has $300,000 and a storage rented that has all of the donated stuff, I think they will make it through and I think you're wrong. I hope you hope you are wrong.

[Tarheel_Dem]

11. I certainly do hope I'm wrong. But I take exception to your swipe at my president.

Unless you're an organizer, you don't get to choose who shows up & who doesn't. ;)

[tavalon]

12. He's OUR President

All of ours and some of us have problems with how he's handled the Republicans and believe that he hasn't shown good leadership qualities (he's the best campaigner I've ever had the honor to watch), hence the reason I don't want him to lead this movement. I busted my butt for this President and probably had way too high hopes, but I'm also a Leo and I expect my fellow Leos to behave in Leonine ways and well, he hasn't.

I'm sorry that you took that as a swipe. I haven't really even been paying attention to DC or to President Obama since We The People have decided to stand up and be our own leaders.

It looks like enough people are stepping up to help re-elect President Obama so that I can step back, definitely vote for him (yes, I really, really am - Three words, Supreme Court Appointments)but otherwise ignore the election. Until OWS, I was beyond dispirited. This optimist had become an angry, angry person. OWS is giving me back my belief in the strength of We The People rather than they, the unresponsive elected.

So, while I didn't mean to diss Obama, I do feel protective and don't want any of the "leaders" of the Democratic Party to coopt and possibly water it down. I CAN think of two people I would allow such spontaneous leadership from, though - Howard Dean and/or Alan Grayson. They epitomize the kind of spine and spunk I want to see in the Democratic party.

You don't really get that everyone involved with OWS is an organizer, do you? This is an organic grassroots effort. I gravitated toward the medical section because that's what I do. But I've watched and participated in the spontaneous consensus meetings happening here. I've also participated online with the affinity groups. It's old style to be an organizer, a precinct captain and so on. This is something very, very new. That's one of many things that are so inspiring about it. If one leader goes away, another takes their place, if leader is even the right word. And it isn't. In 2008, we looked to Obama and it didn't happen, now we are looking toward one another, linking arms and making it happen.

I do get to choose or at least help choose how this movement goes. How much time and effort I put in determines how much choice I have but the consensus nationally right now is that we aren't going to allow a supreme leader to emerge and especially not from the Democratic Machine. This isn't about left and right, Democrat and Republican. If anything, it's about grassroots anarchy, a system that, until recently, I had no respect for. I was wrong. I'm learning about it really, really fast.

If this sputters and fails, we will pick ourselves up again and we will go at it again. We know now that this can work, it can be done and we won't be silenced. They will try, harder with each passing week but they can't take all of us down. If they can, we're screwed but I believe again, I hope again.

[SharksBreath]

14. Spring will come. Elections will be in full swing.

They will be there through the winter.

Then it will get even larger next year.

You sir could not be more wrong.

[Tarheel_Dem]

15. We'll see.

;)

[Cali_Democrat]

9. Amen

This is not about them. This is about the people.

[SkyDaddy7]

13. Republicans are MASTERS at convincing enough of the...

American Public to change their minds & vote against their own economic well being so that true economic change in America has been & will be nearly impossible. They did it with health care & financial reforms in 2009-10 so I don't see why they will not be able to easily do it again. All they have to do is claim it is FREEDOM & the Democrats are against FREEDOM...And that will be that.

Yes, I am cynical but I have good reason to be, right?

Plus, +45% of the country will vote Republican & agree with Republicans on every issue simply due to religion. That is why the Republican Party has the power it doe today. Without the power of religion in American politics this country would look very different today!! So would the Republican Party!