During most of his presidency, Barack Obama has adopted a respectful attitude toward Republicans, seemingly hoping, against all reason and experience, that this would lead to bipartisan agreements about important issues. Toward one other group, however, Mr. Obama has been consistently and overtly disrespectful, disdainful, patronizing, and occasionally outright hostile — the progressive populist wing of his own party.
He appeared genuinely annoyed that these people didn’t understand that he had to work within the political realities he found in Washington. These progressive populists, for their part, have grown increasingly disenchanted with the man they did so much to elect because they believed they were voting for someone who would actually change the political realities he found in Washington.
After these populists flared up in anger when Mr. Obama didn’t fight to do away with Bush-era tax cuts for richer Americans, the White House gave them the equivalent of a political bird. When these populists demonstrated en masse in Wisconsin against a Tea Party-linked governor’s “reforms,” the White House shrugged and ignored their protests. The White House view of all such progressive cries from the heart has been we can safely ignore and even offend these people because they will have to end up backing us anyone, the Republican alternative definitely being even less to their taste,
Then a few weeks back the Occupy Wall Street protests began. And spread. And soon began garnering the level of media attention the Tea Party got two years earlier. And polls began showing that 70 percent of Americans backed at least the most visible demand of the occupiers — taxing the rich — and even 57 percent of Republicans thought it a good idea.
The President’s own poll numbers, meanwhile, continued to fall. And horror of horrors, the Democrats in congress actually came up with a simple, easily understandable idea about how to tax the rich — a 5 percent excise tax on incomes over $1 million that would completely pay for the president’s jobs bill — instead of the president’s own complex and easily attacked in detail plan to do away with some “loopholes” in the tax code (they aren’t really loopholes, of course, loopholes being mistakes in the way a bill is written, they are preferences deliberately put into the code, but let’s not go there now).
So what is the very smart man in White House trying to do now? He’s pretending that he always kind of liked and agreed with progressive populists in his own party, people who somehow are saying many things that most other Americans also believe which the president never noticed before. Having failed to lead from the front on taxes and other issues, in other words, Mr. Obama is now racing to lead from behind.
Should progressive view this altered stance a true conversion to their views? Of course not. Mr. Obama will almost certainly attempt, when the wheels really meet the road, to ignore the 5 percent surtax plan, and “compromise” with Republicans on doing away with a few tax breaks in return (always the in return) for lower general tax rates — the ultimate consequence of which would be to let the rich keep even more of national wealth than they are already funneling to themselves.
That’s the bad news for progressives about Mr. Obama. There is, however, good news, too. This man can be rolled. The Republican right has been proving that for years. Now its time for the populist left to do the rolling.
No, Mr. President, no rich-serving “compromise” on taxes. Do the 5 percent surtax on incomes above $1 million. Period. This is what we want. Or else…
Or else we won’t turn out for you on election day. Or, we will shift all out energies to electing people to congress who share our views and vote the way we want. At a time when bipartisanship has become a bad joke, you are not going to sell us out again in the name of this bad joke.
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