Occupy Wall Street Should Scare Republicans: Jonathan Alter
By Jonathan Alter
Romney’s right. It may be dangerous -- to his chances of being elected.
Occupy Wall Street, now almost three weeks old,
isn’t like the anti-globalization demonstrations that disrupted summits
in the 1990s or even the street actions at the 2004 Republican National
Convention in New York, though some of the same characters are probably
in attendance. With unemployed young protesters planning to camp out all
winter in Zuccotti Park (with bathrooms available only at a nearby
McDonald’s), it’s more like a cross between a Hooverville and Woodstock
-- the middle-class jobless of the 1930s and the hippie protesters of
the 1960s.
With the help of unions and social networking,
the movement has at least some chance of re-energizing Democrats in 2012
and pushing back against the phenomenal progress Republicans have made
in suppressing voter turnout in several states.
Why? Because the tectonic plates of U.S. politics
are shifting in ways we don’t yet fully understand. We don’t know
whether Occupy Wall Street is a carnival party -- a piece of left-wing
street theater that gets old fast -- or a nascent political party that
revives a long-dormant tradition of class- based politics.
It’s possible that these demonstrations, which
have now spread to about 150 cities and campuses, will be hijacked by
extremists or dissipated by obnoxiousness; the American left has
practice in committing suicide. The whole thing could fade as young
people find a better way of hanging out offline.
Something Consequential
But my visits to Zuccotti Park made me think it’s
the beginning of something consequential. So far it looks like a
younger, lefty version of the early days of the Tea Party -- a
leaderless, mostly organic movement with a catchy symbolic name that
captures the public imagination by channeling anger against elites.
Like the Tea Party on the Republican side, Occupy
Wall Street makes the party establishment nervous. It’s not just that
Democratic candidates have done well fundraising on Wall Street in
recent years. The bigger problem is getting the activists to draw a
distinction between bringing specific greedheads to justice and mocking
those parts of Wall Street that are blameless in the 2008 crash and do
plenty to invest in the future of the country.
Directing Anger
But a healthy rebalancing of the national
conversation is nonetheless under way. The Tea Party directed public
anger against the federal government in general and President Barack
Obama in particular; Occupy Wall Street directs that ire against Wall
Street in general and -- inevitably -- Romney in particular.
This will have no effect on Romney in the
Republican primaries, of course, but in a general election it could make
him the poster boy of the big banks that many see as the cause of their
woes. The specifics of his record running Bain Capital LLC will be
subsumed in the image of his rationalizing the actions (resisting any
tax increases) of the “1 percenters.”
The arguments I heard from the often-articulate
protesters in the park were economic, not partisan. None of the posters
depicted Romney, House Speaker John Boehner or any other Republicans.
Instead they said things like “Top 1% Want Everything,” “Listen to the
Drumming of the 99% Revolution,” “Stop Off-Shore Tax Evasion,” and
“Protect Medicare, Not Billionaires.”
It’s easy to denigrate the movement for
simplistic sentiments that lack a clear agenda. But as the Tea Party
demonstrations showed in 2009, that very shapelessness is a huge asset
(to use the Wall Street term). If “We’re the 99 percenters” catches on,
and the crazies can be marginalized, then the challenge will be to move
from the streets to the ballot box, as the Tea Party did in 2010.
Voting Barriers Multiply
Lack of enthusiasm for Obama would be one
problem. But the young people brought into activism by Occupy Wall
Street may face other impediments. Today’s Republican Party is not just
anti-Democratic but anti-democratic. The Brennan Center for Justice at
New York University just released a disturbing report showing that
changes in state laws could make it much harder for more than 5 million
eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012. Some states are putting
barriers in the way of early voting and student voting, both of which
are used heavily by the liberal base.
The most appalling laws make it almost impossible
to vote without a driver’s license, which 11 percent of U.S. adults
don’t have. College ID cards are not an acceptable substitute in several
states. Texas Governor Rick Perry recently signed a bill saying you can
vote with a concealed-handgun permit but not with identification from
the University of Texas.
Discipline Needed
It isn’t hard to see what Republican-controlled
legislatures are trying to do. They want to make sure that the kind of
free-floating anger expressed by Occupy Wall Street doesn’t end up
helping Obama’s reelection. The claim that the purpose of the new
election laws is to prevent voter fraud is itself a fraud, given that
there’s no widespread evidence of ballots cast under assumed identities.
To make something lasting of this movement, the
left must move from legitimate moral outrage to a disciplined approach
for electing candidates who want to make Wall Street more answerable for
the mess we’re in. Even as they’re outspent by the Koch brothers and
their corporate ilk, the 99 percenters will make 2012 a helluva lot more
compelling.
(Jonathan Alter, a Bloomberg View columnist, is
the author of “The Promise: President Obama, Year One.” The opinions
expressed are his own.)
--Editors: Timothy Lavin, Stacey Shick.Click on “Send Comment” in the sidebar display to send a letter to the editor.
To contact the writer of this article: Jonathan Alter at alterjonathan@gmail.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net.
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