Obama's new re-election strategy: Embracing the Occupy Wall Street protestors

October 12, 2011

The Wall Street protests appeared to begin with anger over the "greedy Wall Street fat cat" bank bailouts. I was given this impression from the signs I saw saying "No More Bank Bailouts" and "F**k the Banks." With "Fat Cat Bankers" being a recurring theme used by President Obama in several recent speeches, it is easy to understand the anger people have with the bank bailouts.

Despite Mr. Obama's pandering to the public's anger over the banks, I found it very odd that none other than Timmy Geithner, the poster boy, not only for "Too Big To Fail and TARP but of pretty much all of the bank bail outs, was himself suddenly offering sympathy to the Wall Street protesters. For Mr. Geithner, who as President of the New York Fed, oversaw the New York banks as they were effectively fleecing the public by bundling and reselling the sub-prime mortgages that ultimately collapsed the financial system, to now be offering sympathy to those protesting Wall Street greed, seems, well just a bit unusual.

While greed on Wall Street is nothing new and certainly not unique to the Obama administration, the public's outrage with this greed was certainly highlighted when huge bonuses were paid with taxpayer's funds to those same executives that were responsible for crashing the system. As an apparent reward for overseeing the New York banks fleece the mortgage system, Mr. Geithner was made Secretary of the Treasury by President Obama and it was under Mr. Geithner's watchful eye and the approval of the Democratic controlled Congress, that the bailed out banks were allowed to distribute these bonuses. How strange is it then to hear Nancy Pelosi suddenly support the protesters with "No longer will the recklessness of some on Wall Street cause massive joblessness on Main Street." "God bless them," It was after all, under Ms. Pelosi's leadership that the Democratic controlled Congress approved these payouts.

With their only common comprehensible theme "jobs," threats are now being made by the Wall Street Protesters to storm the Capital in order to "stop the machine." To step back just for a moment, Democrats were in control of both houses of Congress for two years prior to Mr. Obama being elected and had a super majority for his first two years in office. What we heard upon passing some $3 plus trillion worth of spending were recurring themes like "creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs, keeping unemployment below 8% and jump starting the economy through shovel ready projects." A personal, now several year old seemingly forgotten favorite was Ms. Pelosi's promise that Obamacare "will create four million jobs, four hundred thousand almost immediately." Unemployment is now over 9% with no relief in sight and Ms. Pelosi's sudden endorsement of these protesters is nothing less than creepy.

With President Obama's sudden embracing of these protesters, one has to ask if this administration now believes that the public is short sighted enough to forget or dismiss all of the failures of this administration. Candidate Obama sold himself as the "President of all Americans, Democrat and Republican." It would now appear that dividing the nation and pitting the poor against the rich will become this President's reelection strategy. If so, I submit that dividing the nation and pitting the poor against the rich will also become this President's legacy.