In typical herd-like fashion, political pundits of every stripe are now asserting that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters will do for the Democratic Party what Tea Partiers have done for the Republican Party. Except that there’s one glaring distinction which completely negates this analogy.
First, though, it might be helpful to recall that many of these same pundits initially claimed that the Tea Party was a rival to the Republican Party.
But here is how I pegged its members from the outset:
I see no point in wasting commentaries on a bunch of idiots who think they can change Washington by refusing to deal with anyone … who does not follow their Christian-jihadist ideology…
[T]hey clearly have not given a moment’s thought about what it takes to get anything done in this pluralistic democracy they profess to love so much. Because even if they (i.e., the Republican Party – since the Tea Party is just its wingnut subsidiary) were to win control of both houses of Congress by the margins the Democrats now enjoy, they still will not have the votes to execute any of the items on their ‘revolutionary’ agenda. But talk about a perfect storm for gridlock.
(Why I’m so utterly dismissive of the Tea Party, The iPINIONS Journal, September 22, 2010)
Of course, the operative phrase here is “the Tea Party is just its [i.e., the Republican Party’s] wingnut subsidiary”. This is why I was not at all surprised when, instead of forming a rival third party as generally presumed, the Tea Partiers all voted for Republican candidates, which enabled the Republican Party to reclaim control of the House of Representative in the 2010 mid-term elections.
Equally operative, though, is the fact that they “all voted”. For what really distinguished Tea Partiers from other run-of-the-mill protesters was their clear determination to back up their political activism at the polls on Election Day.
By contrast, even though OWS protesters seem to be chanting the rhetoric that defines the left-wing of the Democratic Party, there is no indication that they will back up their political activism at the polls. And if they don’t vote they will be of no use to the Democrats.
In fact, the irony is not lost on me that the failure of many of these protesters to vote in those mid-term elections resulted in Republicans taking over Congress and preventing Obama from doing much of what these protesters are now demanding the government do; most notably, spread the nation’s unprecedented wealth around.
Here is how I pegged them fom the outset:
Perhaps the motley crew of protesters who greet annual meetings of the World Trade Organization and World Bank with a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing constitute a better analogy. For just like them, these protesters would be hard-pressed to articulate not just a coherent purpose, but any practical means of achieving it. Occupy Wall Street, and then what?
Instead, OWS protesters would be well-advised to channel their outrage towards electing politicians at every level of government who champion workers’ rights and the kind of equitable distribution of wealth that Obama is only hinting at with his reelection stump speech about taxing billionaires and creating blue-collar jobs.
(Occupy Wall Street, The iPINIONS Journal, October 6, 2011)
The jury is still out, and will be until election results are announced in November 2012. But I see no indication that, in addition to spewing out Tower-of-Babel-like grievances, OWS protesters are vowing to get rid of the (Republican) politicians who have been blocking all of Obama’s efforts to reel in the excesses of greedy Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs. To the contrary, these certifiably (and justifiably) angry protesters are venting almost as much vitriol against Obama and the Democrats as they are against the Republicans: But like I said, “Occupy Wall Street, and then what?”
Accordingly, I fear these OWS protests will amount to nothing more than political masturbation, and the prevailing analogy to Tea-Party protests will prove patently fatuous.
Related commentaries:
Why I’m so dismissive of the Tea Party
Occupy Wall Street