Politico:
Has Obama found his inner populist?
By: Glenn Thrush and Scott Wong http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65177.html
October
5, 2011 04:32 AM EST
With an
offhand attack on Bank of
America’s plans to impose a $5 debit card fee, President Barack Obama
may have stumbled into a ready-made populist issue for the 2012 campaign.
Obama’s
aides insist that his sharp criticism
of the bank during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos
this week wasn’t intended to kick off a campaign against banking industry bad
guys. But it has already had a galvanizing effect on Democrats who see it as
the perfect way to hop on the right side of the Wall Street vs. Main Street
divide.
They
see Obama’s rebuke — he angrily suggested BofA’s customers are being
“mistreated” — as a golden political moment, the rarest of chances to scale
down incomprehensible trillion-dollar debates into a kitchen-table argument
favorable to their party.
And
even if his staff said not to expect any more BofA-inspired broadsides, there
was an immediate payoff: the fact that Republicans and GOP-allied business
groups spent much of Tuesday defending a bailed-out financial behemoth instead
of customers forced to cough up five bucks.
For a
president whose relationship with the financial services industry has always
been deeply ambivalent — lurching from cold to cozy and back again — it’s an
opportunity to show a more combative side at a time when the faltering economy
is even more of an issue.
It’s
not bad base politics either. Obama’s team has been looking for ways to signal,
if not overtly express, its support for a growing wave of anti-Wall Street
protests that progressives hope will be the left’s answer to the
tea party movement. And it’s just the latest illustration of the suddenly more
aggressive style that many Democrats have long been urging him to adopt.
[20111005
sdosm Politico Has Obama found his inner populist]
Glenn Thrush and Scott Wong - Politico: Has Obama found his inner populist?
*****
Kevin Dayhoff Soundtrack: http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.net/ Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/ or http://kevindayhoffart.com/ = http://www.kevindayhoff.com/ Kevin Dayhoff Westminster: http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/ or http://www.westgov.net/ = www.kevindayhoff.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevindayhoff Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/photos/kevindayhoff Kevin Dayhoff's The New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/ = www.newbedfordherald.net Explore Carroll: www.explorecarroll.com The Tentacle: www.thetentacle.com
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.