As 2009 passed into 2010 and government deficits ballooned, the worries of corporate America and the rich deepened. They saw unemployment rise and stay around 10% and a flood of foreclosures eject millions from their homes. They saw Obama losing support from his electoral base as economic conditions kept deteriorating. They feared that he might be tempted (politically compelled) to regain his base's support by taxing corporations and the rich rather than middle and poorer citizens. Then some Obama remarks blamed Wall Street for helping to cause the crisis and criticized the high executive salaries in corporations receiving government aid. In response, a significant portion of corporations and the rich decided to block Obama from moving any further in such directions.
The way to do that was clear: help Republicans. They reliably oppose taxes on corporations and the rich by blocking all tax increases. Corporations especially interested in preventing Obama from other efforts to recoup his base — such as regulating energy companies after the Gulf of Mexico disaster — helped the Tea Party's total demonization of Obama and Washington. Media exposure for the Tea Party — its activities and candidates — became extraordinary and often quite favorable. Media attitudes toward Obama became much less sympathetic. Funds shifted to Republicans and lobbying against Obama's legislative efforts ramped up.
Obama's team ignored the classic flaw in Keynesian deficit spending policy: underestimating the political struggles over taxes. Middle and lower income individuals were desperate to ease the burdens of the recession on them, while corporations and the rich had no intention of accepting such burdens. As the crisis persisted (no drops in unemployment, foreclosures, job deterioration, etc.) and deficits soared, Obama's base felt increasingly betrayed as very little improved for them. Meanwhile, corporations and the rich shifted support toward Republicans in significant numbers. By mid-2010, it was already too late for Obama. The six months before the November elections were, for many Democrats, like watching an approaching car wreck from inside the car yet powerless to stop it. (Rick Wolff.)
Whoah. Let's keep the conversation focussed on culture war issues, shall we–it's much safer. Don't want to get into that nasty class warfare stuff. It cuts too close to the bone.
At some point Americans are going to figure out that the central political issue of our day is not conservative vs. liberal, but a classic power struggle between the wealthy and the rest of us. The wealthy already understand this; the rest of us don't.
I believe Obama could have prevented his electoral spanking if the broad American public saw him and the Dems as a whole as in their corner against the rich. If nothing else he needed to use his bully pulpit and his prodigious communication skills to make the case for the rest of us. He did not because he's too afraid of the rich and their power, and he, along with ther rest of the corporate Dems, is broadly perceived as being the agent of the rich.
And that's why he's in no man's land, neither here nor there. The rich don't care about him and clearly have no respect for him, because he caves time and again, and the rest of us don't care about him, because clearly he doesn't care about us.
We know–it's harder to govern than to campaign. We know it's a tough job, and that it's complicated. But at some point you have to take a stand, Dude. You have to fight for the people who put you there.
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