Barack Obama is careening down the wrong path towards re-election.
He should be working as a president, not a candidate.
He should be claiming the vital center, not abandoning it.
He should be holding down taxes rather than raising them.
He should be mastering the global economy, not running away from it.
And most of all, he should be bringing the country together rather than dividing it through class warfare.
When Al Gore faced a close presidential race in 2000, he abandoned running on peace and prosperity in favor of the people vs. the powerful, only to see his lead evaporate. When John Kerry was facing a tough race in 2004, he spent the last few months after the convention tacking to the left on the Iraq war and other issues to stimulate the base, only to fall even farther behind.
But when Bill Clinton was facing the fight of his political life in his 1996 re-election, he got rid of all the class warfare language used by traditional Democrats, got behind welfare reform and the balanced budget, and supported a strong, activist government that spent and taxed less rather than more. As a result, Clinton trounced the Republican nominee and was the first Democrat to serve a full eight years since Roosevelt. And the country got behind the president.
Obama's team actually believes that in the last six months they have courted independent voters and that didn't work, so now they are turning to activating the base with higher taxes on the wealthy. However, he never made any meaningful appeal to those voters in terms they would understand. He supported extending the Bush tax cuts, temporarily zoomed up in the polls, and then promptly repudiated what he had done, only to then fall back down.
The 2010 mid-term elections were fought over Obama's healthcare plan and on his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy by ending the Bush tax cuts. The results were, in his own words, a "shellacking." After his most recent speech to Congress, voters in New York City's Ninth Congressional District just elected a Republican for the first time since 1920.
And now, Obama is pressing the case for higher taxes, following in the footsteps of Walter Mondale. Higher taxes always seem to poll well, but in reality the country sees that as a last resort.
In Obama's case, it is particularly damaging to his chances for re-election because of the unique coalition he put together in 2008 to win. The President won the lion's share of everyone making under $35,000. He then did very poorly with middle class voters, but he got a remarkable half of the 26% of the voters whose households make over $100,000. Never before have so many voters fallen into that category and never before had so many of them voted Democratic. Even the so-called top 1% making over $200,000 is actually according to the exit polls 6%, and they mostly (52%) voted for Obama. Without similar support from those upper-income voters, Obama has no way to recreate the numbers that sailed him to victory. And while these voters have become far more socially tolerant, they have also become far more impatient when it comes to economic issues.
What was so brilliant about the Obama 2008 election was that it brought together the upper and lower classes in a common mission of hope and change. Today, he is smashing apart that coalition with policies that seem to be about expanding the scope of government by the trillions of dollars (starting with health care) and raising taxes. Such policies will allow him to hold on to his under $35,000 support, but are anathema to the rest -- and especially the unique coalition of new professionals he forged in 2008.
No question that the fiscal problems have become intense, especially after a trillion of stimulus and a trillion of new health care spending that contains a 4.5% tax increase that no one has yet focused on. But if Obama thinks the way to re-election is increased taxation and spending, he is misreading the mid-terms and last week's elections.
America was mad at George W. Bush for increased spending, taking his eye off the economic ball and most of all for a war they thought should never have been fought. America is today just as upset with Obama, who they elected to bring the parties together in the Reaganesque style he championed as a candidate and bring a new generation to government. Instead, they see a tax and spend liberal trying to take taxes and spending to new levels. The independents and upper middle class voters who were with him last time are abandoning him in droves.
America wants to see the president focused on stimulating jobs and innovation, not on raising taxes in a near recession. The president could be out there with tax reform that promotes America's greatest asset -- the country's hard working and ever successful professionals -- and yet raises funds by closing the gap on taxes on capital. He could have tax reform that righted the balance between capital and wage income without opening up class warfare. And he could be moving forward on immigration reform, on trade deals, on new policies and programs that put America at the frontier of new technologies on energy and pharmaceuticals.
Instead, the president has wandered into the thicket of class warfare that will only compound the difficulties before his climb to re-election.
Robert Reich: Taxing the Rich, the Obama Way
Rev. Chuck Currie: Pass The American Jobs Acts For A Stronger, More Moral America
HuffPost Radio: Both Sides Now: Debating Vaccine, Jews & Inequality
Republicans Call Obama's Tax Plan 'Class Warfare'
Did Someone Say "Class Warfare"?
GOP slams Obama's millionaire's tax as "class warfare" : 2011-09-18
BTW, "shellacking" was a pretty poor way to call this, rather than seeing it for what it really was and fighting it, but it all goes to the tone deafness of the President who may finally choose to show some spine (having tried everything else).
What you call "class warfare" was launched by the Big Money thirty years ago and we are living it now! Someone has to wake up and realize that we are in a class warfare and only one side is fighting, and winning, only because the other side is too squeamish to even acknowledge it.
Pundits will chastise any attempt to speak the true narrative this country needs to hear to have even a dim hope of recovery, why? Time is running out! The co-opting is complete, thorough and relentless!
Listening to the incessant whining of people like this makes me throw up in my mouth. When the middle class, after DECADES of abuse, finally says ENOUGH, they whine and whine like babies that NOW its class warfare.
Ever wonder why CEOs like this turkey and their class-warfare-whining buddies try to get everyone scared of "big government?" Because its a threat to THEM, and it is protection for the PEOPLE they would otherwise prefer to cheat out of every nickel and dime they can. OUR government needs to put corporations in their place.
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed" Abraham Lincoln
Ben Franklin said most notably, "I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Wake up, everyone. Send guys like this loser packing.
What does this joker think Obama has BEEN doing?!?
Obama has been trying to bring all sides together, and has been soundly and thoroughly rebuffed. He has negotiated in good faith, giving up Democratic sacred cows as a show of good faith. Then the GOP would agree, then renege on the deals. Repeatedly. And the GOP would hold the entire COUNTRY hostage, until they got what they wanted.
The Tea Party has been acting like a bully for close to three years now, and the GOP has been kowtowing to them. The President, in an attempt to be the "adult in the room," has enabled everything that they've done.
The vast majority of Americans (measured at three to one or higher) are sick of what the Tea Party politicians are shoveling out. They don't WANT to get rid of Medicare, Social Security, and they are willing to pay higher taxes to bring down the debt. America is WILLING to sacrifice to bring the US back from the brink.
Unfortunately, the GOP has decided (and stated repeatedly) that their primary concern is not helping the US, but in bringing down the president.
The President took his own sweet time coming to this realization. And now he says he is going to fight.
Honestly I hope he does. But he's actually going to have to STICK to his guns before the rest of the country will rally behind him.
Too many lies, too much corruption, too inept.
The Obama Experiment was a miserable Failure by any measure.
Since when is progressive taxation "class warfare?" It is disingenuous to pretend that payroll taxes aren't income taxes. It is a fraud on Americans to argue that the profits from holding a stock for a matter of seconds is such a socially useful investment that it deserves to be taxed at a lower rate. How about a zero percent tax rate on investments held over six months and a 100% tax rate on "investments" held for less? Is that class warfare or is that curbing useless speculation? Income is defined as "net accessions to wealth clearly realized." You're a ceo of a "public relations" firm, what type of education do you have? You are right that BHO should be president; all he seems to care about is being elected and now reelected. You are right that BHO was elected under what has turned out to be fraudlent pretenses and he's at it again now that an election is coming, but don't make it into "class warfare."
My heart truly bleeds for those fools who believe that justice equals class warfare--because when they find themselves suffering for it, they will refuse to deal with reality and suffer more. They have earned their suffering, of course, but those of us who are collateral damage have not.
Saturday 24 September 2011
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/class-warfare-my-ass/1316806211