If OWS Is So Incoherent, Why Is Eric Cantor Talking About Income Inequality?
Via Matt Yglesias, Susie Madrak's great point:
If #OWS Has No Coherent Message, How Come Eric Cantor Is Suddenly Talking About 'Income Disparity'?
I don't want to refight the "Make Him Do It Wars." But this was sort of the point. Yglesias writes:
Obviously at some point in the process of political change it matters which policies get adopted. But control of the agenda space matters too. For a long time, we were talking about “the deficit.” The deficit is a real thing, and it would be nice to address it. There are some good progressive ways to address it. But dragging the conversation in that direction was a victory for the conservative movement. Dragging the conversation onto the terrain of inequality is a major win for the 99 Percenters.
This has always been true. And it is true for Obama as well. Since his jobs speech and his jobs bill, and with the emergence of the Occupy Movement, it's obvious the conversation has changed. This could have happened before. But no spilt milk. Let's look forward.
One last key point - while we can have differing opinions on the degree Obama has been complicit in the goings on, pro and/or con, it seems clear to me that not making Obama the focal point of the Occupy Movement (again pro and/or con) has been critical to its success. Pols are pols and do what they do. To me, OWS is not about Obama specifically. It's about all of our institutions. It's about problems bigger than Obama.
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