Are The OWS People Upset With Obama At All?

[Tank]

All the complaining they're doing,, I don't see any of it directed towards Obama.

 

[Oddball]

I'd say no.

Otherwise, they'd be occupying The Ellipse and Lafayette Square.

 

[uscitizen]

Y'all keep forgetting that there are Paulists among the OWS crowd.

 

[Sherry]

Maybe some of them are...but if they admit it, then Janeane will call them a bunch of racists.

 

[Tank]

I was at the occupy Los Angeles rally today and the main thing they were screaming about was the bank bailouts.

Wasn't Obama president when that happened?

 

[editec]

Certainly the OWS movment has a lot more apologists for Obama than the Tea Party movement had.

But I doubt that most OWS folks are especially thrilled with the guy.

 

[Zoom-boing]

I was at the occupy Los Angeles rally today and the main thing they were screaming about was the bank bailouts.

Wasn't Obama president when that happened?

It started under Bush and continued under Obama.

I only ever hear 'corporate greed' but nothing about 'government greed' from the OWES crowd.

 

[Dragon]

The answer to the OP question is, of course, yes.

 

[Tank]

The answer to the OP question is, of course, yes.

Got any proof?

I haven't seen any.

 

[Dragon]

Got any proof?

I haven't seen any.

Have you actually been to any of the protests? There are always one or two signs that blame Obama for selling out to the corporate interests in one way or another. It's not the most prominent subject of course, but he's not given a pass, trust me.

In fact, many of these people are the same ones who worked on Obama's campaign in 2008, and they wouldn't be protesting at all if he had lived up to his own hype. He has been a serious disappointment.

 

[Tank]

Read post #5, I didn't see or hear anything about Obama.

 

[Sherry]

Got any proof?

I haven't seen any.

Have you actually been to any of the protests? There are always one or two signs that blame Obama for selling out to the corporate interests in one way or another. It's not the most prominent subject of course, but he's not given a pass, trust me.

In fact, many of these people are the same ones who worked on Obama's campaign in 2008, and they wouldn't be protesting at all if he had lived up to his own hype. He has been a serious disappointment.

Token protestors.

 

[Dragon]

Token protestors.

LOL.

I guess it helps that I was in on the Internet roots of this thing before it started. A lot of Obama supporters, young ones particularly, had such naive high hopes. Then things started to go sour. He appointed Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, kept Bernanke at the Fed, installed Timothy Geithner at Treasury, all of those being danger signs. Then administering TARP, he did nothing to break up the banks and reduce them from "too big to fail" status, basically giving them everything they asked for.

Down the line, one disappointment after another. Health care: single-payer taken off the table from the beginning. (We wouldn't have gotten it anyway, but you always start with something that goes unreasonably your direction; it's a basic rule of bargaining. If the Dems had started with SP we might have ended up with the public option.) The end result being a Rube Goldberg weird contraption that does almost nothing to control health-care costs and gives far too much away to the insurance industry. Regulation of finance: no pressure to reinstate Glass-Steagal, which is what is really needed. A new consumer protection agency with inadequate teeth.

It's not that the things Obama's supporters wanted from him didn't get done, it's that he didn't seriously try, and in some cases obviously didn't want them. Like every case where he could have acted without Congressional action: Guantanamo. Ending the wars. Ceasing the Bush administration's assault on the Bill of Rights.

Believe me, Occupy has PLENTY to be upset with the president about. They do tend to dislike the Republicans more, and that's to be expected.

 

[Dragon]

By the way, is there some reason why this thread is in the Tea Party section? I don't see anything about the TP at all.

 

[Sherry]

Token protestors.

LOL.

I guess it helps that I was in on the Internet roots of this thing before it started. A lot of Obama supporters, young ones particularly, had such naive high hopes. Then things started to go sour. He appointed Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, kept Bernanke at the Fed, installed Timothy Geithner at Treasury, all of those being danger signs. Then administering TARP, he did nothing to break up the banks and reduce them from "too big to fail" status, basically giving them everything they asked for.

Down the line, one disappointment after another. Health care: single-payer taken off the table from the beginning. (We wouldn't have gotten it anyway, but you always start with something that goes unreasonably your direction; it's a basic rule of bargaining. If the Dems had started with SP we might have ended up with the public option.) The end result being a Rube Goldberg weird contraption that does almost nothing to control health-care costs and gives far too much away to the insurance industry. Regulation of finance: no pressure to reinstate Glass-Steagal, which is what is really needed. A new consumer protection agency with inadequate teeth.

It's not that the things Obama's supporters wanted from him didn't get done, it's that he didn't seriously try, and in some cases obviously didn't want them. Like every case where he could have acted without Congressional action: Guantanamo. Ending the wars. Ceasing the Bush administration's assault on the Bill of Rights.

Believe me, Occupy has PLENTY to be upset with the president about. They do tend to dislike the Republicans more, and that's to be expected.

I do feel for dems who have lost that loving feeling...you know not every Bush supporter was able to let go after 4 years either. Perhaps among themselves, the left discusses their disappointments...but rarely is it mentioned to any significant degree in public. I think there are still a lot of bitter feelings on their part going back to Clinton's impeachment, followed by Bush "being chosen" over Gore, and then 9/11 and the after math of 2 Bush terms. It's not easy to let go when there has been so many years of frustration...so they really have no choice but to make the best of it, even when it falls considerably short of their expectations.

 

[Tank]

It seems like the OWS people are blaming everyone but Obama, but I did see some people blaming Bush

 

[Dragon]

I do feel for dems who have lost that loving feeling...you know not every Bush supporter was able to let go after 4 years either. Perhaps among themselves, the left discusses their disappointments...but rarely is it mentioned to any significant degree in public. I think there are still a lot of bitter feelings on their part going back to Clinton's impeachment, followed by Bush "being chosen" over Gore, and then 9/11 and the after math of 2 Bush terms. It's not easy to let go when there has been so many years of frustration...so they really have no choice but to make the best of it, even when it falls considerably short of their expectations.

Actually what I was trying to say and never got around to saying was that disappointment with Obama is what this protest is really about. Well, on a deeper level it's about what they say it's about, excessive influence on government by big business, but the point is that there was a revelatory moment for a lot of young Obama supporters when they realized he was as much on the take as any other politician.

Last year, there was a movement on the left, on line, to boycott the election so as to send the Democrats a message. Not everyone went along with that, of course, but enough did to throw the House to the Republicans. You want to know the real reason why the GOP won so big last year? That's why.

The Occupy movement arose because it finally sank home that just electing Democrats wasn't going to solve anything. It was necessary to change the dialog, get things on the table that were being excluded, push the Democrats to do what they're supposed to do.

So really, this whole thing is an anti-Obama protest.

 

[Sherry]

I do feel for dems who have lost that loving feeling...you know not every Bush supporter was able to let go after 4 years either. Perhaps among themselves, the left discusses their disappointments...but rarely is it mentioned to any significant degree in public. I think there are still a lot of bitter feelings on their part going back to Clinton's impeachment, followed by Bush "being chosen" over Gore, and then 9/11 and the after math of 2 Bush terms. It's not easy to let go when there has been so many years of frustration...so they really have no choice but to make the best of it, even when it falls considerably short of their expectations.

Actually what I was trying to say and never got around to saying was that disappointment with Obama is what this protest is really about. Well, on a deeper level it's about what they say it's about, excessive influence on government by big business, but the point is that there was a revelatory moment for a lot of young Obama supporters when they realized he was as much on the take as any other politician.

Last year, there was a movement on the left, on line, to boycott the election so as to send the Democrats a message. Not everyone went along with that, of course, but enough did to throw the House to the Republicans. You want to know the real reason why the GOP won so big last year? That's why.

The Occupy movement arose because it finally sank home that just electing Democrats wasn't going to solve anything. It was necessary to change the dialog, get things on the table that were being excluded, push the Democrats to do what they're supposed to do.

So really, this whole thing is an anti-Obama protest.

Perhaps, but for the reasons I stated, they just don't seem to be able to bring themselves to really call him out on it.

 

[Dragon]

Perhaps, but for the reasons I stated, they just don't seem to be able to bring themselves to really call him out on it.

They're not calling out any politicians primarily. It's like I heard Michael Moore say in an interview on the subject recently. Since the politicians are in essence employees or servants of Wall Street, why not take the protest straight to the boss and cut out the middleman?

More is to come that will be government-directed, though. Watch what happens next summer and fall in Philadelphia.

 

[Sherry]

Perhaps, but for the reasons I stated, they just don't seem to be able to bring themselves to really call him out on it.

They're not calling out any politicians primarily. It's like I heard Michael Moore say in an interview on the subject recently. Since the politicians are in essence employees or servants of Wall Street, why not take the protest straight to the boss and cut out the middleman?

More is to come that will be government-directed, though. Watch what happens next summer and fall in Philadelphia.

I'll believe it when I see it, but I think most on the left will bite their tongues from speaking out against Obama...again, I sympathize with their reasoning.