If They Had the Votes, They Wouldn’t Need to Occupy Wall Street

Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 by Sean Patrick Hazlett

I’ve been meaning to officially congratulate Chris Ladd for becoming a contributor at FrumForum, and wanted to highlight his post today about the Occupy Wall Street Movement. As many of you know, Chris has been a tireless and valuable contributor to Reflections of a Rational Republican. We are thrilled that he is gaining an even wider audience for his writing.

About Sean Patrick Hazlett

Finance executive, engineer, former military officer, and science fiction and horror writer. Editor of the Weird World War III anthology.

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9 Responses to If They Had the Votes, They Wouldn’t Need to Occupy Wall Street

Vern R. Kaine says:

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 07:22

That’s awesome! Congrats to him. I enjoyed his post over there as well. I did, however, disagree with it somewhat although it’s clear from my statements that I’m not an OWS supporter. I can’t speak for OWS, but I believe they’d say that even with a 99% majority vote (in a world of unicorns and leprechauns where that might ever happen), the “system” is so corrupt that anyone they elect would do the bidding of the 1% anyhow.

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- Sean Patrick Hazlett says:
  
  Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 08:38
  
  Yeah, it is akin to the excuse that the stimulus wasn’t big enough.
  
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Scott Erb says:

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 12:54

To be sure, nobody thinks the 99% agree with them. They’re using that to try to send a message — if you’re poor or working middle class, your interests are not with the wealthiest, you should be supporting regulations on the financial industry, higher taxes on the wealthy, and questioning the power structure embraced by both political parties. So it’s not a claim that they represent the views of 99% of the people, but an attempt to get more people to question the status quo. Like the tea party, they’re trying to influence politics. Like the tea party, which is a pain to establishment Republicans, they will likely be a pain to establishment Democrats. In reality both movements are healthy, as the post from Chris Ladd notes, since they indicate something is wrong with politics in this country. When the two main parties are not able to address core problems, movements like this arise out of justifiable frustration on the left and right. This could actually force a change in US politics, regardless of what happens to the Tea Party and OWS movements over time.

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- Sean Patrick Hazlett says:
  
  Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 13:03
  
  Scott, I mostly agree. I am beginning to believe OWS might actually be a liability for Obama. The longer this thing stretches on, the more it perversely helps the Republican Party. Ultimately, I think the Democrats will co-opt the movement. They have to. Otherwise they are in a lot of trouble.
  
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  - Scott Erb says:
    
    Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 07:08
    
    The activists don’t like Obama already. People like Chris Hedges who has supported OWS from the beginning has been very negative about Obama. Yet political parties have a tendency to be able to coopt movements and certainly the Democrats will try to do this. Obama will never win over the hard left, but if enough people are motivated to be active in 2012, the Democrats could be helped by this. But Obama is an establishment Wall Street friendly Democrat, and OWS is a protest against people like him.
    
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    - Sean Patrick Hazlett says:
      
      Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 07:11
      
      I agree. I think being able to co-opt this movement will be a make or break proposition for Democrats.
      
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Alan Scott says:

Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 18:20

My former governor Ed Rendell, who I am not a fan of, has suggested that the OWS people should now go home and organize . Rendell, for all of his faults, is a sharp politician .

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- Sean Patrick Hazlett says:
  
  Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 18:27
  
  Very true.
  
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- Scott Erb says:
  
  Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 07:10
  
  But this is an amazing success for OWS. And they are very well organized logistically. They chose as a tactic not to have one clear set of issues or goals, but instead to be a broad based citizens movement. They are succeeding in their own terms. Rendell and a lot of OWS critics are judging them by 20th century criteria. I think this is an example of a new kind of politics, one we’ll see more often.
  
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