The Dems Are Left Behind (Holding The Bag)
by Dennis Shibut
The Occupy Wall Street movement has frustrated the media talking-heads by not having any political agenda to dissect. All the same the spirit of this demonstration has started to sweep across major cities of the U.S. and even capital cities around the world. But if you look at the faces of these people and read their placards, it’s easy to discern a number of important facts about them individually and as a whole.
First, they are definitely not rabid Tea Party-ers; second, they are certainly not Republicans; third, they are not the well-off or people who live off their investments; fourth, many are the unemployed or graduates with no jobs. Sum those facts up and you can bet your life’s savings that these are people who all voted for Obama in 2008.
Today what the Occupiers hold in common as they camp out in the streets of New York and other cities is that their hope has run out: the hope for a good job, the hope for a more just and honest world, the hope for a better future. And most of all, they have run out of hope for Obama’s promise: “Hope you can believe in!”
Democrats can all easily pass this off by just blaming it on the curmudgeon and moronic Republicans now in Congress. But that situation resulted from President Obama’s own immense blunders that he later would refuse to back-track on or amend, thus leaving the field of battle vacant for the Republicans to move in on.
The worst of these blunders, in my opinion just after the election (along with Nobel economist Paul Krugman’s repeated articles in the NYT), was to bail out Wall Street to the tune of 700 billion dollars while completely ignoring ‘Main Street’, that is, the millions of unemployed and under-employed Americans who voted for him. Where was the 700 billion bailout for jobs? Silence has blared forth from the White House up until now.
Yes, President Obama is currently driving around the country touting his Job Plan, but it’s two years too late. And that makes all the difference. Back when he was elected, he had a Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress to pass even the most generous of Job Plans, while the remaining Republican villains were on the run from possible investigations of the economic collapse that they abetted. Today, thanks to Obama’s gentlemanly ‘don’t blame anyone’ stance, the villains are back in control and anything he tries to pass is just plain Dead-on-Arrival, like this Job Plan.
If you want to be a cynic, the latest Job Plan can be seen as a mere election campaign gimmick to get votes, but its safe because it has absolutely no chance of ever being passed or implemented.
In trying to understand what’s behind the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, one political analyst aptly summarized it this way:
“If the tea party was a conservative response to President Barack Obama’s economic bailout plan in the spring of 2009, Occupy Wall Street came about partly due to liberals’ reaction to the outcome of this summer’s acrimonious debt-ceiling debate. Obama and other top Democrats ultimately agreed to over $2 trillion in spending cuts without any tax hikes on Wall Street financiers or others considered responsible for the economic crisis.
“Progressives watched in horror during the debt-ceiling debate. Obama showed that he wasn’t able to deal effectively with the right wing.
“As a result, there’s now an acute sense of threat on the political left that has encouraged certain people to take to the streets.”
Yet in my view the simplest way to understand the Occupiers is to just read their placards. Here’s what they say…
“Remember the Little People”
“A Few Prosper, Billions Suffer”
“Where’s My Bailout? –99%”
“Jobs, Justice and Education”
“Change Happens Here Now”
“Top 1% Yu No Pay Taxes?”
“Wall Street and Corporations Have Corrupted the Political Process”
“I Won’t Believe Corporations Are People Until Texas Executes One!”
“Capitalism Is Organized Crime!”
“Blame Wall Street GREED”
“We’ll Create Jobs Soon… Someday… We Promise”
“We Demand Sweeping Unspecified Change!”
“Eat the Rich”
“Make Jobs Not War”
“Greed Is Our Policy”
