Does Obama know about the 99%

Conservatives were quick to accuse President Barack Obama of embracing class warfare in his speech last week in Osawatomie, Kan. And liberal Democrats were thrilled to see a hint of the populist president they had hoped they were voting for in 2008.
The polarized reactions suggest that Obama’s speech succeeded in one of its goals: to frame the 2012 election as a clear choice between two philosophies, a contest he might be able to win, instead of a referendum on his own unhappy economic record.
But elections are won in the center, as Obama himself showed in 2008, when he attracted millions of independent voters with a now-outmoded message of post-partisan harmony. And it remains to be seen how the president’s new populism will play with independents.
Obama has struggled with two problems this fall as he prepared to launch his campaign for re-election. One, of course, is the still wretched state of the economy, something he can do little in the short run to improve. But the other problem is one he should be able to fix: the haziness of his own vision.
After a year of alternating clashes with Congress’ Republican leaders and attempts to meet them halfway, even Obama’s Democratic supporters weren’t sure what he stood for.
In the parlance of political image makers, Obama has forgotten to provide a narrative, an explanation of how we got here and how he plans to get us out.
His Kansas speech was an attempt to fill in the missing story line, and to restart his conversation with unhappy voters.
His message – that Main Street has been squeezed by Wall Street and that the future will be even bleaker unless we raise taxes on the wealthy and invest in education, science and infrastructure – isn’t new. But the president put it in a sharper, more moralistic framework than he has offered during most of his first three years in office.


It's funny, here in suburbia, where we are not rich but work hard and where me and many of my neighbors own small businesses, we are not in support of OWS and resent them saying they represent us. For that matter, it sure seems like plenty of 1%-ers from Michael Moore to Alec Baldwin support the OWS folks so it sort of taints their message too.


If 99% of the people agreed on what government should do, they wouldn't need to worry about occupying places and getting politicians to agree, they would win overwhelming landslides. There's no question people agree they want to see America go in a different direction, but never before has the electorate been so split on what to do and how. And it's not a two-sided argument as the media likes to portray. People have varying ideas and no candidate is perfect. That probably best explains the frustration. You can vote for someone but you know no matter what you have to hold your nose. So does your neighbor, who thinks very different from you. It's why no one is happy.


It is not the 1% that the people are protesting it is the failure of the financial institutions that were bailed out along with the corporations that have sent their jobs overseas that make us angry. It is the vast sums of money that corporatio'’s horde and the fact that they don't bring the jobs back to the United States.


The success of corporations and the economies around the world depend upon the ability of the middle class to purchase goods and services. If the middle class is not working they can't pay for these goods and services and hence the corporations will lose money and profits. When the corporations in the United States falter the world economies will also falter ... hence the Middle Class is the most important factor as a consumer that supports our economies. The very foundation... the middle class... upon which corporations depend are the very ones being cast out of the system of profits and gains and opportunity.