Obama Puts Spin on Anti-Capitalist Protests

Police talk with arrested demonstrators who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests for the last two weeks. 700 were arrested on October 1, 2011., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

October 6, 2011

Protests Offer Obama Opportunity to Gain, and Room for Pitfalls

By MARK LANDLER
New York Times

WASHINGTON — Anti-Wall Street protesters marched past the gates of the White House on Thursday, bringing their message of economic injustice to the capital and posing an opportunity, but also a threat, to President Obama, who presents himself as a fervent defender of the middle class.

Brandishing placards that said “No More Wall Street White House” and chanting “Shame! Shame!” the crowd took aim at the president, even if it saved most of its vitriol for the nearby headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — or as one banner labeled it, “Chamber of Corporate Horrors.”

To hear some Democratic analysts tell it, the mushrooming protests could be the start of a populist movement on the left that counterbalances the surge of the Tea Party on the right, and closes what some Democrats fear is an “enthusiasm gap” between their party and Republicans in the 2012 election.

But that assumes the president is able to win the support of these insurgents, rather than be shunned by them.

Mr. Obama, in a series of recent hard-edged speeches around the country, has channeled many of the grievances of the movement known as Occupy Wall Street: deepening economic inequity, a tax code that gives breaks to the wealthy and corporate interests and banks that profit from hidden consumer fees.

Yet the president also oversaw a bailout of those banks, appointed a Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, who is viewed by the protesters as a shill for Wall Street and pushed a reform of the financial industry that many in the movement condemn as shamefully inadequate in curbing its excesses.

“There’s a lot of discontent with Obama’s policies,” said Kevin Zeese, an organizer of the protest, which drew about 500 people. “Obama is out of touch. He’s busy going around the country raising $1 billion to run for re-election.”

At his news conference Thursday, Mr. Obama seemed to recognize the potential and pitfalls of the moment. He sympathized with the frustration of the protesters and criticized Republicans for trying to roll back regulations. But he also defended the bailout and the financial reforms known as Dodd-Frank.

“These days, a lot of folks who are doing the right thing aren’t rewarded, and a lot of folks who aren’t doing the right thing are rewarded,” he said. “And that’s going to express itself politically in 2012 and beyond until people feel like once again we’re getting back to some old-fashioned American values.”

Even before the protests welled up, Mr. Obama’s political advisers said he would focus heavily on the issue of fairness, tapping into a widespread sense among middle class voters that they lost the most in the recession.

Underscoring his more populist tone, Mr. Obama confirmed that he was open to paying for his $450 billion jobs bill by levying a tax surcharge on people with incomes of more than $1 million. The White House had earlier been cool to the proposal, made by Senate Democrats, in favor of taxing a broader group.

Democratic strategists conceded that Occupy Wall Street was a fledgling movement — it began in New York’s financial district last month and has spread to about a dozen other cities — with a murky future but said they viewed it as a potential boon. The left has not had a popular movement to energize progressive voters for some time, even as the Tea Party has become a vital force in Republican politics.

The decision by organized labor to join the demonstrations has given them an extra jolt of numbers and credibility, since unions have historically played an important, but waning role, in mobilizing voters on the left.

“There’s been a lot of talk about how the progressive base is demobilized,” said Robert Creamer, a longtime organizer for progressive causes. “Not only do I believe this will inspire the progressive base, the same way that Tunisia inspired Egypt, but President Obama has framed up the issues perfectly.”

Indeed, the placards carried by the protesters — with messages like “I am the 99 percent; I don’t have a lobbyist” — could have been written by the Obama campaign. The president has made much of the widening gulf between the wealthiest Americans and everybody else, as well as a tax code that makes Warren E. Buffett’s secretary pay proportionally higher taxes than the billionaire investor himself.

Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist, said the movement effectively counters Wall Street’s argument, echoed by many Republicans, that burdensome regulations lie at the root of the nation’s economic problems.

“The coverage the protesters are getting certainly puts a spotlight back on the role Wall Street abuses played, and raises the salience of having a president like Obama who is willing to insist on Wall Street reform,” he said.

The trouble is, the protesters do not think the president has done nearly enough to crack down on abuses. Several pointed out the lack of prosecutions of investment bankers or others involved in the mortgage-finance industry. Others said the Dodd-Frank legislation did nothing to curb the missteps of banks, while Mr. Obama’s economic team, particularly Mr. Geithner, came in for stinging criticism.

“With the people he put in, Goldman Sachs basically occupies the White House,” said one of the protesters, Bill Brunot, 60, a mechanical engineer from Winchester, Va. “We got sold out; the banks got bailed out.”

Mr. Brunot said the president could still win back the support of these protesters by changing course, though Mr. Zeese, the organizer, emphasized that the movement did not want to be co-opted by any party.

Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist and former senior adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said it was inevitable that progressive voters would be disappointed with the Obama administration’s track record, given the compromises that presidents have to make to steer major legislation through Congress.

But Mr. Bernstein said the protests were valuable as an indicator of broader sentiment in the country. “I would advise the administration to think very carefully about the validity of the themes these folks are raising,” he said, “because these are themes that resonate well past the folks on Wall Street.”