For liberals, the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street protests has been a welcome counterattack against the Tea Party movement that helped transform the political narrative of the last three years. They hope the clamor against “corporate greed” can drown out outrage about government spending and taxes and assist President’s Obama’s effort to win re-election on a soak-the-rich platform. So it’s no wonder the left-wing demonstrations have gotten encouragement from Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as well as garnering largely sympathetic coverage from the liberal mainstream press.
But the Democratic belief that this hodgepodge of aging hippies, youthful leftists and union thugs will turn the political tide in their favor ignores an all-too obvious truth: it is they who “own” the disastrous economy and depressing unemployment numbers. Today’s announcement the national rate of unemployment remains at 9.1 percent is a reminder the real narrative that will define the 2012 election is the one created by the statistics that paint a picture of an economy that won’t recover and may be heading for a double-dip recession. As much as the president and the Occupy Wall Street crowd may think they can blame it all on big business, the rest of America knows it is Obama who must shoulder the responsibility for the nation’s troubles.
As his recent speeches and second stimulus proposal have illustrated, Obama believes he can be re-elected by running against the Republican Congress for failing to tax the rich. But the idea the country’s economic difficulties can be blamed solely on the fact the wealthy aren’t taxed enough seems a stretch even for liberals.
The widely reported comparison with the Tea Party also breaks down when you consider when conservatives were venting their spleen about Obama and the Democratic Congress running roughshod over the Constitution with their health care and stimulus legislation, it was not the Republicans who were in charge of the government. While the street protests may be tapping into some of the genuine angst felt by the middle class about their future in a country with a slumping economy, the Democrats who have been cheering them on still largely run things.
So as much as liberals may be happy about the effort to change the tone of the national conversation away from Tea Party outrage about spending to Occupy Wall Street’s anger about the rich, none of this can change the fact Americans will judge Obama on the state of the economy next year, not which protest movement is the flavor of the month.
Indeed, if there is any obstacle to the growth of the left-wing protests it is the presence of a hapless Democrat in the White House. Just as anti-war protests died down once Obama (who largely carried out Bush’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan) took office, the Occupy Wall Street movement won’t really take off until there is a Republican president. Which means unless the unemployment and growth numbers undergo a radical shift for the better in the next 12 months, we can look forward to even larger and noisier anti-Wall Street demonstrations once Barack Obama is defeated.
