Occupy Wall Street Gathering, Losing Support

OCCUPY WALL STREET

• Fascination and Fear (Rick McGahey, an economic policy adviser to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, is a professor of professional practice in the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at the New School, NY Times/ Room for Debate) Democrats want to tap Occupy’s energy, but there's a risk of losing independent voters.
• Poll: Occupy Wall Street movement losing America’s support (Matthew Borghese, Gant Daily) Where the movement begins to lose support most dramatically, is among independent voters. A month ago, independent voters supported the movement (39 percent) but now a majority (42 percent) oppose the protests.
• Poll: Tea party trumps OWS (by Kyle Wingfield, Atlanta Journal Constitution) If a recent opinion survey by Public Policy Polling is any indication, the end of the full Occupation of Wall Street might have been the best thing that could have happened to the movement. Not because it will earn them public sympathy, but because the occupation itself had become the least sympathetic thing about the group.
• Buddy Roemer Slams Mike Bloomberg for Cops Clearing Occupy Wall Street (Kevin Derby's blog, Sunshine State News) "The mayor of New York City is standing on the wrong side of history. His actions in the midnight hours against the Occupy Wall Street protestors are unjust, uncalled for, and unconstitutional," said Roemer in a statement on Tuesday. “The First Amendment right of assembly and speech exists to protect America from this kind of government power abuse.

John Avlon: Closed Primaries Too Easily Hijacked by Ideologes and Partisan Hacks

OPEN PRIMARIES

• Christine O'Donnell: Exhibit A for getting rid of closed primaries (By John Avlon, CNN Contributor) The lesson: Closed partisan primaries are fundamentally unrepresentative. They're too easily hijacked by ideological activists and party hacks beholden to special interests. And because these local primaries are the gauntlet that candidates have to run, they lead directly to the culture of hyperpartisanship that now threatens to paralyze our capacity for effective self-government.
• Primaries now 'the elections' (LETTER Clarion Ledger) Whether it's called "open primaries," or just equal right to vote by everyone, we need a system that gives everyone an equal voice, rather than independents being shut out of the "primaries" where most officials are chosen, and then have to pick between two party hacks in the general election.

Obama, Tea Party, Jobs and Speeches

OBAMA

• CNN analysts: Reaction to Obama jobs speech (From CNNPolitics.com) President Barack Obama on Thursday laid out his $447 billion economic plan before a joint session of Congress, saying that lawmakers should put the interests of the American people before politics.
• Can Obama overcome D.C.'s partisan poison? (By John Avlon, CNN Contributor) John Avlon says a fired up President Obama was appealing to the middle class and small businesses. "He'll need to put forward an equally bold and bipartisan deficit reduction proposal, because the American Job Creation Act's estimated $450 billion price tag will provoke some rote "Stimulus II" criticism, and independent voters in particular have wised up to the fact that throwing federal money at a problem doesn't solve it."
• Obama raps tea-party philosophy in jobs speech (Kathie Obradovich, Des Moines Register/Iowa Caucuses) Obama said most Americans don’t care about politics. But he was speaking to the ones who do, including independent voters who might be lured by the tea-party approach to government. Where would our country be today, he asked, if leaders of both parties had decided not to build our highways and railroads, or decided the federal government didn’t have the authority to create Social Security and Medicare?
• Obama Challenges Congress on Job Plan (By MARK LANDLER, NY Times) “You should pass this jobs plan right away,” the president declared over and over in his 32-minute speech, in which he eschewed his trademark soaring oratory in favor of a plainspoken appeal for action, stiffened by a few sarcastic political jabs.

12 Percent of Voters Are Tea Partiers: Tail Wagging the Dog?

As a quick reminder, the handful of Tea Party freshman who won in 2010 did so in closed primary states. As another quick reminder, the Tea Party couldn't be dictating policy if ordinary Americans were able to fully participate in the political dialogue. Which they're not able to because of the control that the parties and the partisan corporate Big Media (whether "liberal" or "conservative".)

OBAMA

• Obama Hits New Low in Quinnipiac Poll (By Steven Shepard, NATIONAL JOURNAL/Hotline On Call) "Men, whites and independent voters were the president's weak spots when his job approval was positive, and those groups have progressed from being weak spots to being serious problems," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.


• September 1, 2011 - Obama Approval Hits All-Time Low, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Economy Is Getting Worse, More Voters Say (Quinnipiac) Only 12 percent of voters consider themselves members of the Tea Party movement, and voters have a 42 - 29 percent unfavorable view of it, which is better than the 51 - 35 percent unfavorable view of the Democrats and 53 - 32 percent unfavorable view of the Republicans.


• To Get on Winning Path, Obama Should Act Like Democrat (By J.J. Goldberg, Jewish Daily Forward) The usual answer is that independent voters switched from Democratic to Republican, giving the GOP the edge. In fact, there was a shift, but not enough to turn the election. Self-described independents made up about 38% of the electorate in 2010, slightly up from 35% in 2008 (the rise was at Democrats’ expense). Independents favored Obama in 2008 by 54% to 46%; two years later they reversed and went 58%-42% Republican. If you do all the math, you’ll end up with about 4.5 million possible independent votes that switched columns from blue to red. Sobering, but not a game-changer. Put differently, if Obama won back all the independents next year that he lost in 2010, he still wouldn’t win. He needs to win back the Democrats who stayed home while Republicans were out voting.

Tea Party: Republican and Unpopular

Lots of ink lately about the unpopularity of the tea party among American voters, particularly independents, and discussion of the tea party's location as the right wing of the Repub Party:

TEA PARTY

• Study: Tea Party Is Least Popular Group (Pensito Review) Early on tea partiers were often described as non-partisan politic neophytes. Actually, the tea party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the tea party was born. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of tea party support today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being tea party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics … They were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006…


• VIDEO Rachel Maddow with David E. Campbell