I and many others have argued that Occupy Wall Street’s job is not to create policy, but instead simply to create the political space into which others—mainly politicians and policy wonks—can create policy. This is part of what that means:
President Obama and his team have decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy.
The move comes as the Occupy Wall Street protests gain momentum across the country and as polls show deep public distrust of the nation’s major financial institutions.
And it sets up what strategists see as a potent line of attack against Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, a former investment executive whom Obama aides plan to portray as a wealthy Wall Street sympathizer.
Many Democrats consider Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, the greatest threat to Obama when it comes to wooing centrist independents next year, and Romney this week has begun to present himself as a champion of middle-income Americans.
Obama aides point to recent surveys that show anger at Wall Street spanning ideologies, including a new Washington Post-ABC News poll in which 68 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans say they have unfavorable impressions of the big financial institutions.
But the strategy of channeling anti-Wall Street anger carries risks. Many of Obama’s senior advisers have ties to the financial industry — a point that makes Occupy protesters wary of the president and his party.
Two months ago, the idea of the President running a reelection campaign along these lines would be little more than a pipe dream among members of the so-called Professional Left. They’d likely be read the riot act of Conventional Wisdom, the one that “explains” why it is that a Democratic candidate should never, ever, ever run a campaign that focuses on economic injustice and the gross misappropriation of power in the United States by the ultra-rich.
You’ve probably heard the talking points on this one frequently enough—Americans don’t want to see these kinds of “class warfare” campaigns; no one in the US wants to take on the wealthy because we all think we’ll one day be wealthy ourselves; an anti-Wall Street campaign would be “politics as usual,” bruising the electorate’s delicate sensibilities; Real Americans in the Heartland something-something Mike Bloomberg something something third party something something.
Whether or not that argument ever was true (I seriously doubt it), it’s no longer something anyone can subscribe to with a straight face. And while public polling has long indicated an across-the-spectrum enthusiasm for significantly raising taxes on the wealthy, nothing has driven home to politicians and the media elite just how widespread and deep is the antipathy towards America’s economic nobility quite like Occupy Wall Street and the broader Occupy Together national movement.
We say we want our politicians to be our leaders; but the fact of the matter is that politicians follow. And few politicians are more hesitant, more stubbornly insistent upon being the last man on the bandwagon, than the President.
There’s no guarantee, of course, that the White House’s decision to symbolically align itself with Occupy phenomenon will pay electoral dividends, and I think it’s absolutely critical that the movement itself not allow the Democratic Party to co-opt it, but this much is certain—as a result of the happenings in Zuccotti Park and countless other venues, Barack Obama will be running the kind of campaign many Occupiers have demanded from the start.
And they’re the ones who, marching, sweeping, scrubbing (and, yes, drumming) together, cleared the path for him to follow.
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