The Occupy Wall Street movement no longer occupies Wall Street, but the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness. A new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults finds that about two-thirds of the public (66%) believes there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor—an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.
Not only have perceptions of class conflict grown more prevalent; so, too, has the belief that these disputes are intense. According to the new survey, three-in-ten Americans (30%) say there are “very strong conflicts” between poor people and rich people. That is double the proportion that offered a similar view in July 2009 and the largest share expressing this opinion since the question was first asked in 1987.
That’s enough to make Mittens cry.
TenguPhule
The correct term is leaking lubricant.
kdaug
Try asking him how long it took to pay off his student loans…
dmsilev
His chassis got the optional saline drip dispensers?
Villago Delenda Est
He’ll cry like a baby as the tumbrel takes him to his well earned reward.
Mino
By the time Mittens has been on their wide screens for 11 months, the number will be even bigger. Lots.
Violet
OWS helped change the public dialogue and perception around these issues. Maybe we were heading in that direction, but certainly on news shows and in general conversations the topic shifted once OWS was on the scene. The term “the 99%” wasn’t even on the public radar before OWS. Nw even GOP presidential candidates are trying to claim they’re not in the 1%. OWS may not have got everything right, but they certainly did good in this regard.
General Stuck
I like firing people.
After the election, it will be tattooed on your neural net for life.
I don’t think the goopers could pick a better candidate for dems for this particular election. A lot of them know it, but can’t do much about it.
And pretty soon, Mitt’s refusal to pony up his tax returns, will be soaking up most all the campaign oxygen. No telling what sinister Wall Street shit resides there.
kindness
Mitt is screwing himself with his whining about the rich vs the 99%.
Sadly the Village Elders don’t agree with us. Looks like we are going to have a campaign where the MSM insists Obama tie one arm behind his back and Mitt will get to sit on velvet pillows the whole way.
We’ll still kick their asses.
Brachiator
This also suggests that the Occupy Wall Street movement had an impact even though early on people kept complaining that they had no message and were just causing disruptions for no clear reason. Sing it.
If you are the big tree,
We are the small axe
Sharpened to cut you down,
Ready to cut you down
Violet
@General Stuck:
No kidding. Who is the last presidential candidate — I mean an actual nominee of their the GOP or Dems — who refused to release his tax returns?
Violet
Is anyone else missing the buttons for blockquote, italics, bold, etc? They seem to have gone missing for me.
EconWatcher
Maybe this is finally the time when a populist campaign focused very heavily on inequality would actually work. But it hasn’t seemed to work out before.
I commented in a thread below (probably already dead) that making inequality a campaign issue is tricky for Obama. He should definitely do it. But if he overdoes it, it will backfire—at least from what I’ve seen over the years.
It always seems like such a no-brainer. But in the end, this just ain’t France. So many people who you would think should be on board for some serious redistribution just aren’t.
I think the focus will have to be more on those who got rich (or richer) unfairly, rather than just too much concentration of income and wealth. Clinton framed the issue as, “people who work hard and play by the rules are getting screwed, while cheaters prosper.” Just who is in that 1%, and why? That seems to be the most fruitful line of attack.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@kindness:
You campaign for president with the playing field you have, horribly tilted, not the playing field you wished you had.
This won’t change
in the foreseeable futureever.TenguPhule
Until heads roll. Literally.
ruemara
I and a bunch of local political types were discussing this. Amazing how many of them feel that OWS was great to bring the discussion of income inequality to the fore. My only issue-which too few alluded to-is the case of what then? OWS does not push voting, it does “both sides do it too”. Obama is corrupt and same as Bush. They’re currently saying that the NDAA makes OWS a terrorist organisation and they’ll be rounded up for Gitmo (thanks people calling it an indefinite detention for american citizens bill). We’ve had the conversation open so promisingly, but we’re not drawing anywhere near the right conclusions to craft some changes this election and hopefully, the next. Colour me skeptical, but I’m persistently a pollyanna, so, …I’m hoping that the fringiest are the loudest, but the core movement will be putting that class warfare into some serious voting.
Brachiator
@EconWatcher:
People just want their lives to get better, and not have the 1 per cent create obstacles or take advantage. This is more important than who is in the 1 percent. With this single exception:
In America, everybody wants to be in the 1 percent.
DCLaw1
Andrew Ross Sorkin, predictably, is flopping around on Hardball, unable to decide whether the Bain issue is bad or good for Romney, determine whether Romney was responsible for creating or killing jobs, or say anything else of any meaning or import whatsoever.
He’s an “expert.”
General Stuck
@Violet:
He will have to release something at some point. Though he may need to send his returns to Dick Cheney for some proper redaction. Most elections, as long as nothing illegal is in them, they don’t make much difference. But this election is a class war, and the one percenter candidates can run but not hide from the masses, and it matters, excessive greed making money off money leaving destroyed the lives in the wake.
kindness
@Violet: The bulk of his money is in Capitol Gains so he’s paying 15% max. What is he going to say when it comes out that John Q Balloonjuice is paying 24% of his income in taxes yet Mitt 1% Romney is paying less than 15% even though he makes several decimal places over more than John.
@TenguPhule: Time for a revolution yet?
kdaug
@General Stuck:
Ding. We have a winner.
The blade, it rotates slowly…
Triassic Sands
I sure wish something would wipe that supercilious smirk off the Zopilote’s face.
Quicksand
Everyone’s doing it.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
As Steve Schmidt said last night on MSNBC, Mittens won’t release his tax returns and that’s okay because John Kerry didn’t release his. Schmidt admitted that such a release would “disadvantage” Mittens. But, that’ll be the defensive line from the right whenever this point is brought up. Of course defending yourself because another fairly out of touch millionaire loser presidential candidate did exactly what your doing isn’t a recipe for framing success.
It’s another John Kerry parallel. If his campaign honestly feels he has a shot and this is the deal breaker, of course they’ll release them. But it won’t be the deal breaker and Mittens won’t have a shot at winning.
Bokonon
But … but … but … that terrible Obama guy is preventing us from being ONE NATION UNDER GOD!
So says Mitt Romney on TV just this morning.
Quick – look over there! Squirrel!!
Cacti
Fortunately for the President, he doesn’t have to do a lot of work to portray Romney as a thin-skinned, out of touch, blue blood. To borrow from the late Ann Richards, he seems to have been born with a silver foot in his mouth.
Zifnab
Sorry. Nope. Too many idiots. 2012 will be close no matter who the Republicans run, because our country just can’t stand the idea of a liberal in high office – even a painfully centrist liberal like Obama.
Mitt will get the GOP nod, and then we will enter full blown fluff mode. Six months of non-stop “Where is the Birth Certificate?!” and “Look at Mitt’s chiseled jaw and broad shoulders and milky white skin! He’s so Presidential.”
Not that I won’t enjoy watching Rush Limbaugh extol the virtues of Romneybot while complaining about Limosine Liberals (perhaps the irony will finally kill him), but Willard will do better than McCain by an amount that will make us all embarrassed for our country.
SteveinSC
The class warriors are starting to crawl all over this place and I am hoping to run into one or another. Got to write my “gotcha” question on my arm for each so I will be prepared. It’s funny that in this state, home of the Lee Atwater, the most destructive attack ads will be unleashed upon their own spawn. Kind of like Dr. Morbius and the Krell in Forbidden Planet. The republican’s murderous Id is now powered by inexhaustible supplies of money.
kdaug
Earned v. Inherited.
Step 1.
dmsilev
@Violet:
Interesting question. Let me ask The Google:
2008: Obama released returns from 2000 onwards. McCain released a few years of his, but not his wife’s (they filed separately, and most of the money is in her name)
2004: Kerry released a few years of his, but similarly to McCain, his wife initially did not. There was a fair amount of flap about that (absent in the analogous McCain case: Liberal media bias!) and eventually she did release some of her tax info. The Bushes released theirs (I believe they did every year that he was President.)
2000: Both Bush and Gore both released their 1999 returns.
1996: Both Clinton and Dole released theirs. (First hit on ‘Dole campaign tax returns 1996’ was ‘Dole Campaigns as Guardian of Youth’. WTF?)
1992: Clinton and Bush I both released their returns
1988: Both Bush and Dukakis released theirs
1984: Another spouse flap, in this case Geraldine Ferraro and her husband. Eventually, after a fair amount of pressure, they released theirs.
1980: Reagan and Carter both released theirs.
1976: Ford and Carter both released theirs.
1972: Nixon released his. I can’t find out whether or not McGovern did.
(For the actual returns of Presidents, see this: http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/web/presidentialtaxreturns )
So, we have a pretty much continuous 40 year history of this information being released. Also, it looks like Obama is the post-war champion of ‘most open about his finances’, releasing several year’s worth of pre-Presidency returns. FDR has him beat by a long way for the overall title though, with over 20 years of released returns (no idea whether those were released while he was still alive, though).
burnspbesq
@ruemara:
You and I and anyone else who has actually read the bill know that’s utterly false. Why does that zombie lie have legs?
burnspbesq
@kdaug:
Raises an interesting question.
The great bulk of Obama’s income comes in the form of royalties from his books. His Presidential salary isn’t enough to pay his taxes on his other income.
Earned, or not? This is the way the Republicans will try to defuse this issue.
Will it work?
The Moar You Know
The 1% had better pray for another FDR to save them from themselves. The public discourse is at the beginning stages of shaping into a very familiar pattern, and it is one that does not end well for that group of individuals.
venice
Wrong question. The real conflicts are between the investor class and the middle class. The investor class has steadfastly skimmed from the middle class so much so that investor skim is now nearly 1/3rd of GDP. If the mafia was charging a protection fee of 1/3rd of business income it would kill the business, and that’s what the investor class is doing to the middle class.
Focusing on “the poor” is how the investor class kept the middle class looking the wrong direction.
SteveinSC
@burnspbesq: I thought we had laid the NDAA issue to rest when you lost. Signing statements, anyone?
Brachiator
@burnspbesq:
Nope.
Obama wrote the books. He obviously earned the income.
This is not the same as getting income from an inheritance or trust, or even dividends from stock purchases, in most people’s minds.
And this is also not even the same thing as tax code definitions of earned and unearned income. I could build a house with my bare hands and rent it out. The rental income is not put in the same bucket as wages or self-employment income.
Amounts of income earned may make a difference as well. I am surprised at how many people have a mental idea of “too much money.” They think it’s OK to be rich, but bristle when someone is outrageously rich, especially if they don’t like the person.
Mitt may be in the “too much money” camp for some people.
Comrade Mary
Economic imbalances and social inequality risk reversing the gains [sic] of globalization, warns the World Economic Forum [Pinkos! Commies!] in its report Global Risks 2012.
Or, as the envious soshulist Reuters puts it:
Full PDF here.
The Moar You Know
@Zifnab: Rush will be 61 tomorrow. He’s been through four wives. He’s a heavy smoker. He’s been hospitalized for angina and has to use Viagra (which means for sure he’s got at least partially blocked coronary arteries). He rendered himself deaf with Oxycontin. He’s fatter than Tunch.
Something’s going to kill him and with a history like his it will be much sooner than later. He might make it through the next presidential term, but I doubt it.
Benjamin Franklin
Part of the strategy of the 1 per cent is to keep the masses so frakkin’ busy, they don’t have time or energy to absorb News and then analyze same.
‘Occupy’ made it easy for them to connect the dots. Ergo; successful effort.
Maude
@The Moar You Know:
You’re cheering me up. thx.
JCT
@General Stuck: And Mittens is not doing too well with his “framing” as Steve Benen outlined today. Apparently Sir Mitt is going to chalk up all of this Bain bashing to folks being “envious”.
The back and forth with Matt Lauer (of all people) today was pretty telling.
He has absolutely no empathy or understanding of anyone below his elite economic status. It comes across as sociopathic.
magurakurin
@Benjamin Franklin: I think this is mostly correct but I am in the camp that OWS has made it easy for people to see the dots. If OWS can get people into voting booths, I’d say they got them to connect the dots. And setting Obama aside, surely, a candidate like Warren in Mass. is worthy of OWS vote. There are others at local and state levels to be sure.
But without question, OWS has been a game changer on many levels and very successful on many as well. Overall a very positive thing.
Chuck Butcher
The theme will be, “Give us (1%) the reins (reigns, rains) and we’ll put the show back on track. You’re fucked because we didn’t have enough control.”
Yep, quiet backrooms…
It’ll work with enough to scare you…
Jay in Oregon
@General Stuck:
A far more interesting theory that I’ve heard is that Mittens has not been as diligent with his tithes to the Mormon church as he’s supposed to be. (As I understand it, the Mormons are quite emphatic on the importance of tithes.)
If true, I wonder if that would be enough to peel off what would otherwise be a loyal base of support for him?
DFH no.6
@Zifnab:
I see the coming presidential general campaign and election exactly as you do.
Very much including the “full blown fluff mode” of the media carrying Romney’s water.
I just hope the amount “Willard will do better than McCain” which will certainly, as you say, “make us all embarrassed for our country” (like 2004?) does not put Romney in the White House.
Anyone who thinks it won’t be close – or that Obama will beat Romney easily because Romney’s “robotic” or an “out of touch richie-rich” or whatever other flaws the man has – hasn’t really been watching how American electoral politics works.
It’ll have to be donating, phone banking, and canvassing (god I hate canvassing!) for the lot of us in order to prevail over the visceral Republican hatred of the black Democrat in their house (it’s not like they are – or ever will be – all riled up for Romney).
Also, too, the shitty economy.
Benjamin Franklin
@magurakurin:
Don’t think there is usually a problem in National elections. It’s the local and off-year votes which need some caffeination..
gaz
@Violet:
I fully expect Veritas to crow about Romney setting another record.
burnspbesq
@SteveinSC:
You thought wrong. As always.
DFH no.6
And by the way, where’s matoko-chan been lately on all these Mittster posts to tell us all how Romney can’t possibly get the nomination due to Mormonism, and anyway he’ll certainly lose the general due to needing to get an impossible number of white voters or whatever?
Compared to the fullness of evil that is the Kenyan Muslim Soshulist Usurper Obama, Willard’s Mormonism means squat. He will be the nominee.
And have a floor of around 50 milliion votes for the general, guaranteed.
It’ll be turnout (no idea which side has the advantage there right now) and the dumbass swing voters – and particularly how they feel about Obama vs. Romney re:the economy, round about September/October – that will decide the election.
kdaug
@burnspbesq: He made (wrote) something. He sold it. He made a profit. Good for him.
He didn’t inherit shit.
Self-made man.
Brachiator
@Violet:
Not sure. There is this, from a NYT piece.
Mitt even flip flopped back in 1994.
gaz
@Jay in Oregon: I sure hope you are wrong about that!
It’s much more politically damaging for romney, if is tax status would show what many people suspect it does – meaning he pays FAR less than your average American.
If anything, the Mormon’s quitting him will only be the final nail in the coffin of his election prospects. He needs every white vote he can get, because he sure as hell isn’t going to get the votes from anywhere else. But really, it’s not as universally toxic I think, as it would be were we to find out that he pays like %20 of his yearly take in taxes.
Well, in correction – I guess, it’s not so much that I hope you are wrong, as it is that I hope we’re both right. Maybe we’ll get a twofer =)
magurakurin
@Benjamin Franklin: you are probably right and in that end the OWS will probably lead to votes no matter what. It’ll be a win in the end, I think.
harlana
@EconWatcher: I think Obama is just going to keep talking about “fairness” – at this point, we all know “justice” would be a more appropriate word, but in this kind of environment, I think “fairness” will suffice, as it’s pretty obvious we are living or just trying to survive in an unfair system. We don’t have to explain to the people what they are living right now and what they know they have lost, probably forever. Which is, at the very least, is “unfair.”
General Stuck
@JCT:
Just too much phony baloney postures for pandering to this or that crowd in a fractured GOP, for anyone to maintain for very long. His framing screwups won’t be pounded by his own side in the primary, at least by that motley crew. but he will be doing rhetorical trapeze without a net in the GE. At once trying to satisfy the tea tard base and swing voter indies. Most candidates start more or less solid in their party’s base, and then tack some to the center. Mitt starts with the natural mentality of a centrist, and will have to commute to the right and back again a gazillion times without anyone noticing anything funny.
FlipYrWhig
@DFH no.6: but, here’s the thing. The media carried water for McCain because they liked him as a person. They carried water for Bush because they liked him as a person, at least after they got over their true crush… John McCain. They didn’t particularly help Dole, Clinton, or Bush I. I’m not sure we know that media stars help Republicans. It may be that they just were all pallsy-walsy with McCain and Bush II. I have a hard time seeing the media come out swinging for Mitt Romney. All the things that the media dogged Kerry and Gore for, Romney has in way worse and more obvious ways.
harlana
@EconWatcher: I think Obama is just going to keep talking about “fairness” – at this point, we all know “justice” would be a more appropriate word, but in this kind of environment, I think “fairness” will suffice, as it’s pretty obvious we are living or just trying to survive in an unfair system. We don’t have to explain to the people what they are living right now and what they know they have lost, probably forever. Which is, at the very least, is “unfair.”
But we’re supposed to only discuss it in a “quiet room.”
Amir Khalid
@DFH no.6:
I challenged m_c on this point a few days ago. She denied that she’d ever said Mitt couldn’t be nominated. What she had actually said all along, she insisted, was that Mitt was unelectable i.e. in November.
The poor dear has been rather quiet lately. Heck, I don’t even remember when she last called me a “maftoon”.
WereBear (itouch)
I think they did fantastic. From the time W got elected, varous ways to let the population realize they were bring ripped off were tried; and failed.
They did it.
harlana
@FlipYrWhig: this cannot be overstated, i can’t see him overcoming that, which is fatal
harlana
@JCT:
And Mittens is not doing too well with his “framing” as Steve Benen outlined today. Apparently Sir Mitt is going to chalk up all of this Bain bashing to folks being “envious”.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
I heard tell that William Ayers claimed he wrote “Obama’s” books. Ayers even said he’d be happy to share the royalties with anyone who could prove it. ;)
muddy
@The Moar You Know:
Rush is still alive due to burning pure spite.
WereBear (itouch)
Mitt Romney is sooooooo the wrong candidate for 2012. I guess they picked him because he’s taller than the guy from the Monopoly board.
chrome agnomen
@Maude:
i’d be so happy i’d mop everybody’s bathroom naked.
WaterGirl
@harlana: All the folks who need food stamps… they’re not hungry, they’re just envious of all the folks who actually have enough money for food.
JCT
@WaterGirl: “Envious” is just a *terrible* term — just drips with “Yeah, you all want what I have don’t you? Too fucking bad, sucks to be you”.
Old Mittens better hope those tax returns don’t get forced from his hands, coupling his “envious” comments to his presumably wicked low tax rate will be political gold.
Maybe more people cold have what you have Mittens if the deck wasn’t stacked in your favor…
Suffern ACE
So did they ask which side the respondents thought they were on or who they were rooting for?
priscianusjr
@EconWatcher:
priscianusjr
@EconWatcher:
priscianusjr
@Brachiator:
Aardvark Cheeselog
@TenguPhule:
Not even then, if history is any guide. Sorry.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@Violet:
Even though some others have googled this already, here’s some context that hasn’t come out.
I believe this tradition started in either the ’68 or ’72 election, which was the last time there was as much public disgust with abuses of the tax system by the rich. This was the timeframe when the AMT was created, because there was so much gaming of the system that DuPonts and Rockefellers were paying no income taxes at all.