I think it’s time the Obama team turns the stategy reins over to me. Ever since the misbegotten selection of the clownish Joe Biden, Obama and the entire Democratic party seem off their game. (Did I not predict Biden would be a continual embarrassment? What a lost opportunity!) They have no game. They have no line of attack. It’s either been conceding that George Bush was right about the surge (as Obama admitted to Bill O’Reilly, rather than focussing on the mismanagement of the war from about Day Three in a way that required the enormous unnecessary loss of life for five years). Or it’s gotten itself obsessed with their opponent’s vice presidential pick in exactly the snotty elitist way that seems to confirm what I believe to be a mistaken impression of Obama.
What the campaign needs to do is focus on Wall Street. On what FDR called “the malefactors of great wealth”. On the fact that the Republican party through its obsessive, greedy, lobbyist driven fetishizing of financial de-regulation has allowed the economy to be turned into a casino for the super-rich which has driven us into ruin by turning the hard earned money of the rest of country into mendacious instruments of greed on a vast scale–the entire “derivatives” scam that is behind the subprime crash-threatening fiasco going on now.
Yes, it’s true that the Clintonians were in bed with them (and Biden was a shill for the credit card industry) but six years of pure Republican rule handed the economy to the hedge fund creeps, virtually turned the economy into a hedge fund, a huge financial scam. Rather than re tooling it for the new century, they retooled financial instruments for their own disgraceful enrichment.
This is the year for a populist assault on these greedheads who once again have demonstrated that their unchecked, unregulated chicanery outruns their sense of responsibility. So what if many are Democrats, the more the shame. Obama should run against them too. I think there is a vast untapped resentment out there against the sharpies who have ended up bankrupting and selling out our economy. It’s time to hold them responsible, and in a democracy a presidential campaign is the time and the way to do it.
This is a huge story and it fits into a century’s old Democratic populist narrative that could have great appeal to the people who are now drawn to Sarah Pain because of resentment against the elites who have put working people onto the street.
“Change” is no longer enough. Even if you don’t buy the “maverick” meme of the GOP ticket (I don’t), it appeals to the vast majority of the country who know that the scam artists of great wealth have screwed up and screwed up bad. And that while they won’t go broke or go to jail (most of them), they have plenty of resources to fall back on while a great majority of voters don’t.
The biggest financial scandal in American history is going on entirely unacknowledged by both campaigns, but especially by the Democratic party which is supposed to be the guardian of the little people against Big Finance. It sounds old fashioned, “Big Finance”, and maybe the Democratic Party has been too complicit and populist have appealed before. True most people don’t hate the rich, they want to be rich. But most people have a sense of decency that the malefactors of great wealth have shown they lack. And here’s where Obama can–should–be a change agent. He’s not complicit. He should get angry about this. He should denounce those in his own party who have gone along on the lobbyist greased road to ruin. It should be his big issue. Otherwise, is there any real difference between the two parties except empty slogans.
Exchange “change” for a focus on the Exchanges and you’ve got a winning issue. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.
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