Why Economic Populism Is a Winning Strategy for Obama

[xchrom]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/167336/why-economic-populism-winning-strategy-obama

The centrist Democratic group Third Way has a new report out about “Swing Independents,” who they claim are the Soccer Moms/Reagan Democrats/Rockefeller Republicans of 2012. (I prefer to think of them as the fickle souls who can’t make up their minds.)

These Swing Independents, according to Third Way, make up 15 percent of the electorate and currently favor Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by 44 percent to 38 percent. But despite their soft pro-Obama leanings, Third Way argues that Obama’s populist message of economic fairness is turning these voters off. Swing Independents care about “opportunity,” not fairness, prioritize cutting the deficit over reducing income inequality, don’t believe the US economy is skewed to favor the wealthy and “consider themselves to be haves, not part of the have nots,” according to the report. In other words, Obama should cozy up to the banks (as if he hadn’t already), stop campaigning on the “Buffet rule” and make the Bowles-Simpson debt plan the centerpiece of his presidency. (The presidency already tried that strategy for much of 2011, and it didn’t work.)

It’s hard to know who is more out of touch—Third Way or the “Swing Independents” they claim to speak for. At the very moment that prominent Republicans are admitting that Obama’s focus on income inequality has put the GOP on the defensive, Third Way wants the president and Democratic candidates to drop the issue. That would be political suicide, not to mention terrible public policy.

This week a new ABC News/Washington Post poll asked voters: “what do you think is the bigger problem in this country—unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy, or over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity?” Fifty-two percent answered “unfairness,” while only “37 percent” mentioned “over-regulation.” A December 2011 Pew poll found that 61 percent of Americans believe the US economic system “favors the wealthy,” with 36 percent saying it was “generally fair.” In a November 2011 ABC News/Washington Post poll, 61 percent of the public said the federal government should “pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less-well-off Americans,” with 35 percent saying it should not. So much for the canard that income inequality is an issue the public doesn’t care about.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. The Turd Way is a buncha Neocons and banksters

with maybe some vaguely progressive social views, but a Chicago-school understanding of economics.

[TheKentuckian]

2. The Turd Way in all their lame incarnations are Republicans and

should be treated as such. Authoritarian greedhead, economic royalists who would sell their brothers and sisters into slavery for a quick buck that aren't hardline bigots but will roll over on anybody for the ca$h-women, blacks, latinos, gays in a heartbeat, the elderly faster than you can say catfood, sure as shit the environment.

Same Republicans as we have known through the decades, slightly different rhetoric to justify their greedhead ways.

[xchrom]

3. the question i have is -- why the migration away from the republican party to the democratic party?

what purpose does it fulfill?

i mean i have my suspicions -- but there is a story in there.

[izquierdista]

4. One would hope it was because they got educated and wised up

But I fear they are colonists sent by the corporatists who have already conquered all they can in the Republican party.

[TheKentuckian]

5. Who doesn't want heads I win, tails you lose?

You also get the benefit of restricting every debate to terms between tolerable and a dream.

Best of all you you convert the competition from the outside to a franchise set up where the Redskins can hate the Cowboys all they want as long as the NFL gets those TV checks and makes the rules.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Subversion

or the Republicans have become too crazy for people who are merely greedy and disdainful of the "lower classes," not Puritanical.

[Populist_Prole]

6. K&R. If the Third Way pans it: It's a winner

Rethugs don't like true populism, and the Third Way seeks to assuage their fears. Where did these maggots come from, and why are we listening to them?

[agent46]

7. What kind of populism did he run on the first time?

Populism is always popular with the masses.

[kenny blankenship]

9. He can talk a good game - and then what?

We've seen what. No thanks.

I'd rather he ran as the Reagan Republican that he is, than defraud people with phony populism (again).