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.There's more here.
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.
Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.
The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%).
An overwhelming majority of demonstrators supported Barack Obama in 2008. Now 51% disapprove of the president while 44% approve, and only 48% say they will vote to re-elect him in 2012, while at least a quarter won’t vote.
Fewer than one in three (32%) call themselves Democrats, while roughly the same proportion (33%) say they aren’t represented by any political party.
What binds a large majority of the protesters together — regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education — is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.
Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement — no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%–22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).
Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That’s why the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party.
According to one report I read, the plan of this movement was to keep their demands and goals very vague so they could attract as many people as possible, and then once they've bought into the idea of being in this movement, radicalize them toward socialist and even communist goals.
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3 comments:
I disagree. What's wrong with believing in non violent civil disobedience? Wasn't that the heart of the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s?
What about all those Tea-Party rallies in which people carried guns or talked about Obama being a fascist, socialist, etc.?
Based on the litmus tests established by the current GOP, Ronald Reagan would be to the left of Obama. Reagan repeatedly raised taxes. He was pro-union in his speeches. And, decried the rich paying less in taxes than the working class.
As for people calling themselves liberals or Republicans, if you ask most people about individual issues, they tend to lean towards liberal positions:
1) Pro-choice
2) Gay rights
3) More taxes on the rich
4) Support of public education
It's deeply troubling how many Christians seem to ignore Jesus' words and just mimic Republican talking points. When did Jesus ever call the poor parasites or racoons? When did Jesus align himself with the wealthy? Would Jesus really believe in the Social Darwinism pushed by the American Rightwing? When did basic Christian charity and concern for others equate Communism? Worrying about the poor?
Economic data show that over the past 30 years, wealth has been pushed towards the top 10% of Americans and away from the remaining 90%.
There's clear evidence that the banks produced false documentation to foreclose on homes. Yet, no one at the banks has been charged with fraud. Why is that? If a regular person submitted forged documents to a court of law, wouldn't she/he be charged with a felony?
It's odd that people want to ignore the severe decline in economic security of the middle and working class in America. If they don't have a strong incomes, how will they buy things to drive the
I don't even know where to start with that mess. You either know nothing about or Obama or even less about Reagan. Reagan slashed income tax rates which got the Carter economy started again. He also fired the unionized air traffic controllers.
The OWS rallies are anything but nonviolent. There have been over 1000 arrests at OWS events, which is over 1000 more than at Tea Party rallies. The people who carried guns at Tea Party events did so legally and there was no violence or arrests. They talked about Obama being a socialist because he is one.
Only 53% of wage earners currently pay income taxes, and yet morons like you want them to pay even more while 47% pay nothing. If you want tax fairness, the rich should pay less and the people currently paying nothing should start contributing.
There will always be rich and poor people and nothing you can do will change that. If you were to redistribute all the wealth today and make everybody even, within two years some would be rich and some would be poor. Nothing would change. Your view is simplistic and illogical.
OWS is a movement of social parasites...nothing more.
Anon, Reagan wasn't the only one to cut taxes:
"America has enjoyed 22 months of uninterrupted economic recovery. But recovery is not enough. If we are to prevail in the long run, we must expand the long-run strength of our economy. We must move along the path to a higher rate of growth and full employment.
For this would mean tens of billions of dollars more each year in production, profits, wages, and public revenues. It would mean an end to the persistent slack which has kept our unemployment at or above five percent for 61 out of the past 62 months—and an end to the growing pressures for such restrictive measures as the 35-hour week, which alone could increase hourly labor costs by as much as 14 percent, start a new wage-price spiral of inflation, and undercut our efforts to compete with other nations.
To achieve these greater gains, one step, above all, is essential—the enactment this year of a substantial reduction and revision in Federal income taxes. . . . [A] net reduction in tax liabilities . . . will increase the purchasing power of American families and business enterprises in every tax bracket, with greatest increase going to our low-income consumers. It will, in addition, encourage the initiative and risk-taking on which our free system depends—induce more investment, production, and capacity use—help provide the two million new jobs we need every year—and reinforce the American principle of additional reward for additional effort.:
From John F. Kennedy's State of the Union address, Jan. 14, 1963.
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