“OK so I still don’t understand what this Occupy Wall Street movement is all about.”
While the criticisms of Occupy from the Limbaughs and Gingrichs of the world are typically insulting; calling the protesters dirty thieves and rapists, and suggesting they bathe, many independents and even moderate Democrats are still trying to wrap their arms around the movement, looking for some sort of definition.
Journalists are doing the same thing; asking the same questions.
For those busy with their lives; raising kids, going to work, trying to get something out of life, it’s certainly understandable to have a sense of confusion about the millions of protesters across the world, braving cold weather, batons and pepper spray to occupy the streets, parks and public spaces across the world for a cause that so many see as indefinable.
Journalists, however, should know better. They have the ability to go into the crowds and talk to people and compare the protests with the alarming statistical trend of the distribution of wealth and power in the United States and across the world from the middle class to the top 1 or even .001 percent of the population.
Ross Douthat, the New York Times columnist recently wrote, “The O.W.S. protesters, on the other hand, haven’t even settled on concrete political objectives. As two of the movement’s more perceptive conservative critics —Matt Continetti in the Weekly Standard and James Panero in The New Criterion — have said, many protesters seemed more interested in founding a kind of Paris Commune or Oneida Community in Zuccotti Park than in actually participating in public-policy debates.”
What these journalists and conservative critics have missed wildly is that the Occupy Movement is doing far more than finding people with nice suits and ties and seasoned Public Relations teams participating in debates on packaged talk shows.
The new reality is simple: The Occupy Wall Street Movement is now defining the economic debate in our nation. That alone makes the movement, still in its nascent stages, an extraordinary success.
How is that possible? They’ve inspired no real legislation or policy that has transformed our economy or brought wealth and power back to the middle class. They’ve elected no government leaders and have barely put out any press releases giving journalists the answers they are too lazy or too budget-constrained to figure out themselves.
In an earlier Muscular Liberalism Column I talked about the “Conventional Wisdom” and how Conservatives have done a masterful job of creating context for debate that creates a winning outcome before the conversation starts. They took control of the direction of the American economy when Ronald Reagan announced at his 1981 inaugural that “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
For thirty years of well funded conservative think tanks have pushed forward millions of derivates of that Reagan mantra and created an alternate reality that has resulted in the largest distribution of American wealth from the middle class to the top 1 percent, since the Great Depression. (See link to stats on that at the end of this column).
And I believe many conservative leaders believed as recently as last August that they still had full control over the conversation. After all the Democrats, complicit in their Mondale/Dukakis/ Kerry/Gore model of “we’re not all that bad” branding of liberalism, allowed the Limbaughs of the world to walk all over them with the heavy feet of distortions, distractions and outright lies.
Barack Obama, inspiring in his election win in 2008, yet victorious mostly because the country’s economy was spiraling out of control, has in many ways reverted back to a position of trying to convince Republicans that liberals were more open to conservatism than the accusations against him claimed.
In fact just three months ago Conservatives had full control of that conversation. During the summer of 2011 debt ceiling debacle—an effort by Republicans in the House to bring the nation to the brink of economic default in order to win a political victory—all the talk; among Democrats and Republicans, Journalists and pundits, was how we should cut spending to get rid of the debt.
Many were even rapidly advancing the idea the most of the debt we now have in this nation was the exclusive fault of President Obama through the Stimulus and the Affordable Health Care Act. The two wars, Medicare Prescription Drug Act and massive tax cuts—unpaid for by the GOP led Congress and President Bush—were virtually ignored in their role in creating our ever growing debt.
“How much should we cut?” was the question.
Republicans asked it. Democrats asked. Anchor people asked it.
The answer came in John Boehner’s “98%” victory in those disappointing negotiations with President Obama.
Massive spending cuts in everything from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security were on the table for chopping up and spitting out into the trash bin of history. Once again middle class and impoverished Americans were to shoulder the burden for Wall Street greed and government deregulation.
Not today.
After 4 months of global Occupy protests there’s a new question driving the economic debate of our times.
“How can we achieve economic equality?”
Make no mistake; this is a massive and pivotal shift in the national conversation. Millions of Americans are waking up to the idea that the top 1% in the country have been playing a 30 year trick on the middle class and they are, at long last, connecting their struggling economic fortunes to the policies that created them.
For decades middle class Americans believed that their taxes were going to lazy, poor people who just wanted to feed off the public teat with their hard earned tax dollars. There’s no easier political promise than to ‘cut your taxes.’
And there’s no easier political point scoring than ‘they want to raise your taxes and give your money to people who just don’t want to work for it.’
There’s no more effective scapegoat than the fictional character created by Reagan called the ‘welfare queen’.
Yet since the Occupy Wall Street protests began, Americans are tossing out the stereotypes of the lazy good for nothing recipient of free tax dollars and coming to the harsh realization that they cannot educate their children successfully without good public schools, that they will never save the million dollars or more it will take to retire with decent health care and a roof over their heads if Medicare and Social Security are gone.
The Occupy Protests were followed directly by the Wisconsin and Ohio Tea Party supported governments seeming to blame the economic collapse of 2008 on Teachers, Firefighters and Police Officers.
The Occupy Protests were followed by Tea Party conservatives deliberately trying to keep elderly citizens, impoverished citizens and college students from voting.
And now across the landscape of both journalism and public debate the idea that we must cut, cut, cut to reduce our debt is being replaced with the clear-eyed realization that income and power inequality is now front and center at the debate.
The canary in a coalmine for the demise of the Conservative conventional wisdom came from none other than our dignified yet, far too polite President, Barack Obama. It was both shocking and refreshing to hear him say this in early December, pushing for the continuation of a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans, paid for by a small tax increase on people earning more than $1 million a year.
"Let your members of Congress know where you stand," Obama said last week in his weekly radio and Internet address. "Tell them not to vote to raise taxes on working Americans during the holidays. Tell them to put country before party. Put money back in the pockets of working Americans.”
A couple of months ago President Obama even dared to call for the wealthiest Americans to “pay their fair share. We can't just cut our way out of this hole…If we're going to make spending cuts, many of which we wouldn't make if we weren't facing such large budget deficits, then it's only right that we ask everyone to pay their fair share,"
That’s tough talk from a President who many supporters believe has backed down far too many times.
Democrats in the House and Senate are slowly but surely unwrapping their inner FDR and with less and less fear going after adding more welfare for the rich.
In fact I think many Progressives were happily shocked that none of the Democrats on the so-called ‘Super Committee’ caved into the Republicans on that committee. They refused to agree cuts without revenue increases.
Since the Republicans in the Senate used the filibuster to prevent the American people from getting a fair vote on the entire jobs bill, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to put it in front of the Senate in a piecemeal fashion. First was the $35 million package that would have gone directly to states and localities to hire teachers and schools workers and police officers, firefighters and first responders.
With the Tea Party giving orders in the House and Mitch McConnell adding to his historic record of filibustering in the Senate, there’s little chance any provision would be passed. But for once the Democrats are pushing forward and President Obama is talking the talk.
"For the second time in two weeks, every single Republican in the United States Senate has chosen to obstruct a bill that would create jobs and get our economy going again," Obama said in a statement after the vote. "Every American deserves an explanation as to why Republicans refuse to step up to the plate and do what's necessary to create jobs and grow the economy right now."
A breakthrough did happen however because even the Republicans couldn’t deny tax breaks for businesses that hire Iraq and Afghanistan Vets. And while some booed Michelle Obama for appearing at a NASCAR race to promote the hiring of America’s returning soldiers and Rush Limbaugh called her “uppity” in his daily dog whistle to white racist working class voters, few others in the Fox-right wing political movement joined in on the critique of our most dignified First Lady.
Poll after poll shows large majorities of Americans, 60% and more, favor raising taxes on the Americans making more than $200,000 a year to balance the budget and pay for jobs programs to jump start the economy.
Occupy is both responsible for this change in attitude and at the same time represents a very clear reflection of the sense that Americans are no longer in lock step with the ‘my-tax-dollars-are-going-to-lazy-people-who don’t-want-to-work’ attitude that prevailed in America since the Reagan Revolution against the middle class.
Furthermore the Occupy movement has put wind the sails of formerly frightened Democrats who are now going into the Christmas holiday fighting for the payroll tax cut and millionaire tax increase.
Even Frank Lutz, the pollster who has helped create much of the deceitful language of the right for the last 20 years, sees the effect of the Occupy movement. Lutz said recently that he is “scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death.” The pollster warned that the movement is “having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”
And the American people are waking up to very clear and undeniable evidence of the massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the top 1%.
No one can say for sure whether the Occupy movement inspired President Obama’s striking December 5th Kansas speech promoting Progressive economics and demanding the end to Supply Side Economics, but it’s become quite clear he feels much more secure about painting a broad picture of the failure of Conservative economics.
“The theory of “trickle down economics…It’s a simple theory — one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked.”
I cannot imagine Walter Mondale, John Kerry, Michael Dukakis and Al Gore circa 2000 making that kind of bold statement.
The Occupy movement has compelled even the most frightened Democrats to finally stand up for the truth of Progressive Economics and the failure of Conservative economics.
Occupy may not put out well crafted press releases delivered by men and women in sharp suits and coiffed hair-dos. But these protesters are now occupying the American debate and beginning to drive the American conventional wisdom toward a far more truthful and factual debate.
That will translate into something very different when 2012 comes around.
(FOR A GOOD LOOK AT THE TRENDS IN ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN THE LAST 30 YEARS CHECK OUT THESE STARTLING STATITSTICS ON THE RISE OF INCOME INEQUALITY IN AMERICA)
