Commentators in the United States are predicting President Obama can’t win a second term. His poll numbers are at an all time low. Only 43% approve of his performance as president while 47% disapprove. Unemployment in the US has remained stubbornly high at 9.1%, the worst since 1983. Despite these dreadful numbers it must be pointed out that in September 1983 the unemployment rate was also at 9.2%. Then Ronald Regan was president and only 46% approved of his performance. Regan did not have any problem getting reelected thirteen months later. But that may not what will save Obama. What will save him is a coalition presently named Occupy Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street is a spontaneous grass roots movements. It seems like it is filled with outcasts, malcontents and the generally weird things that New York throws up from time to time. Some pundits have dismissed it, but that is unwise. In 2009 after the triumphal election of Obama in 2008, a small group of what appeared to be crazy old people often dressed in 18th century costumes complete with tricorn hat started to demonstrate in front of state capitals and disrupted government hearings. They called themselves the Tea Party movement after a legendary and destructive riot that occurred in Boston in 1773. Their message seemed unclear, occasionally racist and often simply silly. Yet in just over a year it coalesced into a major force that was able to set the agenda for the Republican Party and eventually take over the US Congress.
What united the Tea Party though was not a love of history. It was fear. Obama by just his appearance represented a monumental change to America. Older white people came from a world where both their position in American society and America’s position in the world seemed secure. Now all that seemed to have changed. The world economy had collapsed. The US was broke and owed a ton of money to China. Government programs meant to benefit them seemed in jeopardy and their long term jobs were disappearing.
It is that same potential for fear that could unify the people Occupying Wall Street. There is a difference. While the Tea Party is more of a movement of want to keep. Occupy Wall Street could be the more of a movement of the won’t haves.
The largest segment of the want to haves is the young and often well educated. The reason they are well educated is that they were able to go to university. The way they were able to pay for it was with government subsidized student loans. The amount of these loans is huge, potentially over a trillion dollars. The probability of students getting good jobs to pay off these loans has been decimated. The crushing burden of these loans makes it almost impossible for younger workers to afford anything like a car or a house that their parents enjoyed. They cannot even get rid of the loans in bankruptcy and there is no statute of limitations.
Other have nots include minorities. Minorities have been especially hard hit by the recession. The average national unemployment rate for whites is 8%, but for Hispanics it is up to 11% and for Blacks it is 16% double white number. These minorities are not just a small fraction of the electorate. Instead they presently make up a third of the population.
Another segment are the used to haves. Most of these are the people who have lost homes in foreclosure, over three million since the recession began, added to that are the 4 million whose homes are delinquent in their payments over 90 days. Finally almost thirty percent of homes have mortgages that are larger than what the home is worth.
Then there are the might not haves. These include millions of workers whose promised pensions may not exist. States all over the country are having financial problems. Only one state, Delaware has over 90% of its liabilities funded. Over 60% of the states have liabilities that exceed 20%. In 16% it is over 40%. The total pension shortfall could be over $2 trillion and that is does not include private companies.
Against this back ground the Republicans and Tea Party are unsympathetic. According to former pizza executive Herman Cain “if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!”. Candidate Mitt Romney blasted the anti-Wall Street rallies as “dangerous” and “class warfare.” While candidate Newt Gingrich called the protests a “natural outcome of a bad education system teaching them really dumb ideas.” Meanwhile Republicans in Congress stoutly refuse to raise taxes people making over a million dollars a year.
What Obama needs to win is a way to unite the disparate islands of anger against this insensitivity. The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations may do just that.
