Robert Reich: The Birth of the People’s Party

[ProSense]

The Birth of the People’s Party

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Hear what they’re saying: Stop attacking unions. Stop making scapegoats out of public employees. Stop protecting the super-rich from paying their fair share of the taxes needed to keep our schools running.

Stop gutting the working middle class.

Are we finally seeing average Americans stand up and demand a fair shake in an economy now grotesquely tilted toward the wealthy and the privileged? Are Americans beginning to awake to the fact that our economy now delivers a larger share of total income to the very top than at any time in living memory? That big corporations are making more money and creating more jobs abroad than in the United States?

That this concentration of income and wealth has so corrupted politics that corporations can extort whatever they want from the government — tax breaks, loan guarantees, subsidies — while the super-rich can take most of their income as capital gains (taxed at 15 percent), and the rest at the lowest top rate in 25 years? And that because of this our kids are crowded into classrooms, our streets and highways and bridges are falling apart, and our healthcare bills are out of control?

The Tea Party grew out of indignation over the Wall Street bailout — an indignation shared by the vast majority of Americans. But the Tea Party ended up directing its ire at government rather than at big business and Wall Street. Was this because billionaires Charles and David Koch and their like funneled money to the Tea Party through front organizations like Dick Armey’s Freedom Works, and thereby co-opted it?

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[H2O Man]

1. Power to the People!

[highplainsdem]

2. K&R

[Bandit]

3. I would join a true "People's Party" in a heartbeat since the Democratic Party no longer is.

Used to be the Democrats would have given most anything to be able to get in front of a camera and stand up for the middle class. To march with them and to actually Represent them. That day has past...The People are now on their own and the Republicans know it and have launched their full assault on the workers of America..

[mod mom]

4. Let's hope this movement flourishes!

[hootinholler]

5. CoOpted it?

Hell the average tea party type could not organize by themselves. I submit they created the movement via Dick's Armey.

-Hoot

[postulater]

6. The Democratic Party is a fragmented coalition

that gets together to oppose the Republicans every four years. There is no other shared value.

When this movement can focus on a common value like 'tax the rich' then it can flourish and be even more powerful than the Democratic Party.

Could it field a candidate in 2012? Should it?

Who knows? But if it does gain strength it will make Obama rethink which direction he wants to move his center.