Is Obama Trying To Change The Subject Of The Debate With Occupy Wall Street?

From Legal Insurrection:

While conservatives can demonize #OWS and try (despite MSM resistance) to harm Democratic politicians’ electoral chances through their association with the movement, this is a hit the Democrats can afford to take, because all the while, #OWS is serving its true purpose:



Changing the subject.


Van Jones, Richard Trumka, and the rest of Obama’s far-left allies propping up #OWS aren’t stupid. Neither is the National Federation of Teachers, the union from whose office space #OWS is operated . They are successfully reframing the debate over the economy to be about the rich vs the rest of us. It doesn’t matter if people think they’re crazy – it matters that people internalize the 99% vs. 1% way of thinking and begin hearing and talking about statistics concerning income inequality in America.


“The rich” and big corporations are deeply unpopular, and by turning Democrat vs. Republican into the common people vs. the corporate fat cats, Democrats can win elections. The discussion is no longer the national debt, no longer the president’s sorry stewardship of the economy. Instead, the topic of the day is inequality and class. The right may defeat #OWS, but without addressing this problem, Obama and his allies will have accomplished their objectives.


Before the backdrop of war and economic ruin, the Democrats are resurrecting the social forces of the analogously-situated interwar period to win elections by railing against bankers, the wealthy, and the perils of free and competitive markets, as well as promoting the utopian idea that experts and intellectuals can centrally manage society. From these forces, communism and Fascism rose and spread, and while I have more faith in America than to believe that they could ever get particularly far today (to out credit, it didn’t even get that far back then), it is important to remember where this path led, and what Roosevelt’s 1936 campaign was about.