A Reset for 2012
WASHINGTON – Pres. Obama didn’t lift a rhetorical sentence to help Wisconsin activists fight Scott Walker.
In Ohio, Ed Schultz was on the front line, while Pres. Obama stayed out of it. In Arizona, the voters kicked out a radical right wing bigot.
Mississippi refused a “personhood” amendment that was so extreme it would have theoretically outlawed some forms of contraception, as well as in vitro fertilization.
But it’s Obama who is benefiting from what happened, taking Ohio as a prime example, which will come as very good news for the White House and national Democrats. It’s good news for progressive activists, too, no matter how much Pres. Obama has infuriated them.
Organized labor’s early flirtation with Occupy Wall Street is starting to get serious. [...] “The Occupy movement has changed unions,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “You’re seeing a lot more unions wanting to be aggressive in their messaging and their activity. You’ll see more unions on the street, wanting to tap into the energy of Occupy Wall Street.” Unions have long stuck to traditional tactics like picketing. But inspired by the Occupy protests, labor leaders are talking increasingly of mobilizing the rank and file and trying to flex their muscles through large, boisterous marches, including nationwide marches planned for Nov. 17. Organized labor is also seizing on the simplicity of the Occupy movement’s message, which criticizes the great wealth of the top 1 percent of Americans compared with the economic struggles of much of the bottom 99 percent. – Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics
Just months ago, Obama’s chances in Ohio for 2012 were uncertain at best. However, after what labor, teachers, firefighters and cops did on SB-5, the Democratic coalition, joined by Republicans too, have not only made the Democratic Party a little sexier, these activists proved their party actually stands for something.
I’ve been writing about the “coming home” phenomenon for a very long time. From PPP:
The biggest thing Obama has going for him right now is an extremely unified Democratic base. Obama gets 88-92% of his party’s vote against the six Republican candidates. What makes that particularly notable is that [Pres. Obama's] approval rating with Democratic voters is actually only 73%. But these numbers suggest that when election time comes around the party base will get around Obama whether they’re totally thrilled with him or not, and that’s a very good sign for his reelection prospects.
Give people something to rally around, as well as vote for, as they did in Ohio for instance, and they’ll come out every time. Democrats didn’t in 2010 and they got what they deserved, even if the rest of us did not.
Occupy Wall Street is the backdrop.
It is the power helping fuel what’s going on.
The inspiration for people to get up and out and OCCUPY.
What happened in Ohio and in many other places across the country must be seen through the “We are the 99%” prism. Activists and voters who show up to vote in off-year elections know about #OWS, they’re savvy and they’re speaking out about what’s happened to the middle class, because they’re living it.
So, let’s call last night’s election a reset for 2012.
There’s something new afoot.
People are fed up. So they rose up, spoke out and then voted, with their successes washing over national Democrats, including Pres. Obama, most of whom don’t deserve to share the glow. But that’s how these things work. Now if the national politicians could catch the fever of your purpose.
A couple of months ago I said Pres. Obama had until Election Day, yesterday, to change what was going on.
He got lucky. The voters, represented by what happened in Ohio, did it for him.
What’s next? The supercommittee decision. People are watching.
Taylor Marsh’s new e-book, The Hillary Effect – Politics, Sexism and the Destiny of Loss, the view from a recovering partisan, will be published on November 8th. Marsh is an author, Washington based political analyst, veteran national politics writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her new media blog.
13 Responses to “A Reset for 2012”
Ohio is a localized instance of organized labor fighting for their lives versus a dispersed public, which may or may not have benefited from scaling back public unions’ negotiating power. And the guys at AFSME, IBEW, etc etc alway say the same shit, “we’re really with these gutsy kids blablahblah” it’s gets them a smidgen of PR and maybe a smidgen of leverage somewhere (in this case getting some folks to picket Sotheby’s on behalf of the werkers). The election comes down to a) the economy as of late next year – and Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of power over that and b) whether it’s Romney or a fruitcake he’s facing, and I’m betting it’s Romney. Swing voters in PA and NC are not gonna be thinking “wow the kids and the werkers are out fighting the good fight, I’ll vote for Obama out of solidarity blahblahblah.” And you know what? It even doesn’t make a differene whether Obama or Romney wins. Except to housewives who enjoy feeling some drama in their dreary lives. So I thinks anyway.
Wishful thinking. More of how we wish it to be instead of how it acutally is. Why not wait until the dust has settled before you see how much of a bump O gets from Tuesday’s decisions? After all, there is no debating that many moderate Repubs and Independents voted to defeat both the OH and the MS propositions. Stating that this same bunch will be voting for O next November is a real stretch.
SteveK says:
“People like Mark don’t understand that sexist digs make everything they say between their first sentence and last dig irrelevant to most people… both women and men”
Amen!
“So I thinks anyway”
I thinks dat some1 is trollin or at least playing a role.
Oh I just thought it wa an apt metaphor for overblown hopes based on thin evidence. And this “analysis” of the elections in Ohio and Miss. *does* read like a Barbra Streisand memo to the DNC.
The next election cycle, 2012, will be the tie breaker. A lot of time for mud slinging and character assassination, etc. Plus, it’s the economy , stupid.
McNuckols-
It’s just an attempt by a known Obama basher to appear “objective”. Anybody that has even bashed President John F Kennedy to get to Obama can never be trusted as a Democrat. I’m sure you would understand my sentiments had the Romeny campaign bashed Reagan to get a dig into Ron Paul or whomever.
Taylor, some commentators seemed to have missed the point, but I didn’t. Obama is not acting as a leader for his “team”. He is on the sidelines for pretty durn near everything, seemingly disinterested in the key issues of the day that aren’t happening in his own office. That lack of peripheral
Vision is making him irrelevant. IMO it is they key reason his base support is eroding.
He needs to get in the game. He can’t win a second term by sitting on the sidelines.
Barky, is that called “leading from behind”?
No Barkey
If he said anything you would blame him for trying to politicize it in his favor. President Obama is an excellent president. He has done a damn good job at fighting Republican intransigent crap. He is not like these republican candidate cowards, he leads from the front and that is exactly whay he is such a giant target for the rightwing-nuts. Whom, contrary to their own self promoted image, couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a howitzer.
Would one need to hit the broad side with a howitzer? I seem to remember (from my army days) that close was good enough…
Obama has both good and bad times of leadership. He seems to think that the Constitution is set up to have Congress make the laws (it is). However, that is not the usual practice in this country. The Democrats were reeling from the 2010 elections. The 2011 votes may give them hope for next year. It should not be all that difficult to show that austerity measures in Britain have slowed the economic activity there to a near stand-still. Since the R’s are proposing the exact same medicine for us, it should then be easy to point where the dots are leading. However, I have seen the D’s repeatedly snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, so I’m not holding my breath.
Well, just because someone is sexist doesn’t make what the person says or does irrelevant. That’s a big logical failure as well as a fallacy (ad hominem). And might it not be hypocritical if those in question defend and even admire Bill Clinton, for example? (It would be hypocritical, indeed, as well as illustrating the fallaciousness.)
Now, may of us do that all the time. If we experience distaste, it affects what we think of the rest of what the person says or does. But I don’t believe it’s consistent among those who practice it.
As far as Obama: I don’t believe competitive sports have the analogue to voting “present” rather than playing on the field.
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