American Presidential Candidates

Ghost14 · February 7, 2012, 3:59pm

Re: American Presidential Candidates

the alternative is to persuade the electorate’s fence-sitters (anywhere between 20-30%) that liberal/progressive views are superior. this task speaks to a much larger and more fundamental issue than political strategy. it requires a large scale societal reexamination of political identity vis a vis socioeconomic, racial, and religious identity. i’m not holding my breath.

i don’t really buy this. i don’t even consider the financial crisis a “wall street swindle”. that narrative is tailor-made for main street consumption but it’s very weak, fundamentally. the reality is that unemployment is the ultimate driver of phenomena like occupy wall street and the causes of unemployment are manifold. **congress’s susceptibility to lobbyist influence is a major problem but it’s really not the main problem.
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the reality is that these are hard times and americans are simply not used to hard times. i wouldn’t read too much into it.

I disagree with the bold part. Of course it’s the main problem. How else could you explain that almost 70% of Americans want higher taxes (not excessively higher) on the rich, but this doesn’t happen? There should be increased regulation of Wall Street, hasn’t happened.

If the government won’t come to bat for the middle class, then who will? I find it ironic how anti-tax the neo-cons are yet it was Republican president, Hoover, who raised taxes, despite protests from his contemporary Republicans. Why? Because it was good for the country.

The hold that the media has on their respective audiences, especially Fox News and the right wing radio circuit, is also troublesome. However, if the country is in better shape financially, then these outlets lose their listeners, most of whom are angry about their current financial outlook. But the government does nothing to rectify said situations, because they are more interested in appeasing lobbyists.