Back in the 1960s the New Left used street protest to oppose the Vietnam War. They brought down a Democratic president and helped elect a Republican, Richard Nixon.
In the 2000s the Angry Left, assisted by capitalists like George Soros, the mainstream media, and the Democratic Party, took to the streets to oppose President George W. Bush and everything he stood for.
Now, with the Occupy Wall Street movement, we see the Democratic Party use street demonstrations to support an incumbent president. And George Soros and the labor unions are along for the ride.
With sympathetic reporting on the protests from the mainstream media, we must assume that President Obama is backing the protests as part of his Soak the Rich reelection strategy. It shows that he really is a movement leftist, as his conservative critics have charged, and really lives his community organizer values. Left-wing protest is what he knows; left-wing protest is what he does. So he has decided to live or die by the street protest.
Just one thing, fellas. When the Democratic Party last tried this in the late 1960s the American people hated it. The liberals and the mainstream media all fell over themselves about the wonderful "kids" demonstrating for a just and liberated society. But the American people went the other way.
In fact, the protest era of the 1960s and 1970s ended the Democratic Party's reign as the Everyman's party. That's because for the American people, as opposed to rent-a-mob activists, the economy and the country must work for them to prosper and thrive. It may be tremendous fun for "students" to create mayhem in the streets, but ordinary working people need to get back to peaceable work. The people most upset by the Wall Street protests are the retail business people in the area (often immigrant minorities) trying to run a business.
In a way, I feel amazed. President Obama and his people can't really believe that they can get reelected this way. By sending left-wing demonstrators into the streets? By making the American people afraid? If it works, they will be geniuses.
But my money says that President Obama is creating a gigantic opening for the Republican Party to take and hold the center ground of American politics. One big reason: Women. Politicians in recent years have avoided calling people into the streets because they know that women hate that sort of thing. Women hate street fighting. They like to see politicians that get together and discuss their dilemmas and all agree to get along. Candidate Obama of 2008 was a politician who was all about people getting along and getting past the childish partisan games of the 2000s.
What has changed since then? The answer is Obama himself. Back then he was the cool challenger, and everything was going his way. Now he is the embattled incumbent and things seem to be falling apart.
When pilots experience an emergency, they go with their training. That's why the airlines do tons of emergency training. When something goes wrong, the pilot doesn't have to think, he just applies his training.
That's what President Obama is doing in the current emergency. He is going back to his training. And his training is in left-wing grievance politics. The problem is that his training doesn't really apply to the welfare state in crisis with failed programs, massive debt, and 9 percent unemployment.
So he will make it worse. That is going to cost the US. Big time. And it is going to cost the Democratic Party. Really big time.
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