It is almost laughable. If our economy was not badly suffering from Obamanomics and if unemployment was not already well over the reported 9%, the Occupy Wall Street movement would be a great Saturday Night Live skit.
The OWS movement is a combination of 1960 hippie revivalism, spoiled kids not taking responsibility for their life choices, unions looking for new members, anarchists always looking for a venue to protest against our great country, and political operatives hoping for the next great sound bite to use against their opponents.
But the reality is that our economy is suffering, millions of people are under or unemployed and the Obama administration has failed miserably in its attempt to apply academic theories to managing a dynamic economy in need of multiple solutions. Obama has created the crisis but would rather campaign against it now than solve it.
As former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel once said, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” So whether or not Obama operatives and sympathizers organized the OWS protesters from the beginning, they are certainly ensuring that the movement has traction as even President Obama has now added the 99% slogan of the protesters to his 2012 campaign stump speech to malign the supposed 1% who profit from their misery. Of course there is nothing that Obama the community activist extraordinaire likes better than to divide and conquer his opponents.
Depending on who in the media you ask, the OWS movement is a protest against our banking industry, against millionaires and billionaires, against greedy corporations, or against our capitalist way of life. The protesters – some of whom have been paid to participate in the OWS marches – claim to not have any organizational structure but somehow various liberal celebrities always seem to have the major media around when they give a formal holler of support. Obama’s friends in the Service Employees International Union seem to be at the right place at the right time for major events. And somebody is paying for all of the free food and sleeping gear.
Certainly in any populist protest, there will be issues which appeal to those on the left, right, and in between so it is not surprising that the American public currently supports the generic OWS “movement” when not asked for their support on specific OWS complaints. Who is not against getting rid of corruption in our economy? Who is not against a Congress unable to implement strong solutions to our economic malaise?
Even I support the OWS complaint about the big Wall Street banks that put short term profits from creating and betting on mortgage-backed securities over sound policy of making sure they only gave or backed loans to credit worthy individuals and corporations. But of course the OWS crowd does not remember that Democrats in Congress wrote the laws to encourage such behavior by forcing red line loans nor do they want to remember that Wall Street gave tens of millions of campaign contributions to candidate Obama in 2008 and that the Obama administration is full of Wall Street cronies.
And while the OWS crowd is complaining of the 99% of citizens being screwed by the so-called rich 1%, the OWSers have not mentioned the 47% of Americans who are taking advantage of the 53% who pay all of the federal income taxes. They would rather rally to have their loans written off by the big banks than worrying that their failure to pay such loans will ultimately affect bank shareholders including plenty of retired Americas.
The big question now is whether the Occupy Wall Street movement has the potential to form into a voting block to help their embattled Community Organizer In Chief next November. David Axelrod, Obama’s 2012 Campaign Chief certainly knows that a large percentage of Occupiers are the same college crowd which voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2008. And with most of them now under or unemployed, the Obama campaign cannot chance being blamed for that situation so they need to ensure that youth vote now rallies around the OWS banner and votes for continued change in 2012.
In my opinion, the American public will soon get tired of an organic Occupy Wall Street movement with no practical solutions to the many problems they cite. And with a movement that is becoming politicized and organized to benefit one political party over the other.
Most Americans relish those that are successful. The OWS obsession with class warfare will soon be the reason for its demise. And if President Obama continues to support the movement with his stump speeches, he will only be hurting himself come next November.
