October 17, 2011 10:04 PM UTC

Occupy the Oval Office

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• by: JO

For anyone still skeptical of the real impact of Occupy Wall Street, look again. In just a month, it has progressed to the verge of dictating the direction of the Democratic Party in 2012-and the reelection strategy of Barack Obama. And not a moment too soon.

Evidence:  From The Hill, Oct. 10, 2011: “The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is asking supporters to sign a petition in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.” http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-… Five days earlier, Obama declared that OWS represented the “broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”

Not exactly an endorsement–yet.  But that is surely coming.

Obama really has no choice. In 2008 he was the candidate of Hope and Change. But no sooner did he sit down in the Oval Office than he bowed towards Wall Street, which had heavily favored him over McCain in the donations department, and appointed T. Geitner as his treasury secretary and L. Summers as his economic adviser. Having achieved the pinnacle of establishment power, he promptly began acting like he was at, well, the pinnacle of establishment power, which in this country means acting in accord with the captains of finance (the captains of industry having long since emigrated). One might think this would endear Obama to Wall Street, but alas, he seems to have been abandoned in favor of Romney (“Obama’s Wall Street donors shift support to Romney,” Yahoo. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ti… )

This has left Obama, one year before the election, sitting on the side that doesn’t support him, i.e. the Republican moderates, and alienated from the side that did support him three years ago. Barring the nomination of a certified nut case by the Republicans – can’t be ruled out, of course – Obama will soon wake up to the fact that the enthusiastic young and old supporters who ran doorbells, figuratively speaking, in 2008, are now marching with OWS. And for everyone actually in the street last Saturday, how many stay-at-homes were sympathetic?

Some polls have support for OWS, vague as its stated goals may be, as high as 65%, and certainly on a par with the right-wing version, the Tea Party.

The vagueness of OWS’s goals is precisely Obama’s opportunity: he can, should, and I predict will, translate the discontent of the demonstrators into specific proposals: to regulate banks, a la Glass-Steagall, to impose mega-taxes on incomes over $1 million, to classify capital gains as income (unless the investments have been held for 5+ years, perhaps), to launch public spending for infrastructure, schools, and education as stimulus, and steps to put American works on a par with Chinese workers (a complicated issue involving currency manipulation and tariffs), as well as mega-incentives to return manufacturing to the United States (also a complex issue). His challenge will be to make that translation sufficiently radical to appeal to both the need and to those sympathetic to the actual demonstrators.

His false friends on the right will be appalled, but they’re not doing any good anyway. Moreover, nothing is going to be accomplished before the election. Obama needs to stop pretending otherwise; his jobs bill is going nowhere, and if it were a partial solution to the crisis faced by the country, Republicans would certainly have nothing to do with it! Obama needs to go into full campaign mode now. He is already well behind the opposition.

Without the support of OWS sympathizers, Obama’s chances of occupying the Oval Office are roughly zero. With them — and whether he can persuade himself to adjust course sufficiently to gain that support remains a big IF — they are excellent.