Here it comes. It's clear that the Republican strategy to protect the 1% from the rising tide of anger is to play Archie Bunker politics, seeking to drive a cultural split between blue collar whites and demonstrators. So far, it has failed:
In the National Journal poll, 56 percent of non-college-educated whites back the demonstrators, though the right-wing media continually depict them as trust-fund babies gone wild.
In the strange case of Occupy Wall Street, none of the usual cultural signifiers by which we’ve been conditioned to hate one another seems to be working. Where have you gone, Archie Bunker? What gives?
Blue Collar Workers and OWS: "Where Have You Gone, Archie Bunker?" (quoting Harold Meyerson)
Greg Sargent reports they are doubling down on trying to create a culture war:
National Republicans are now attacking Elizabeth Warren for embracing the protests, seeking to make a liability out of the fact that Warren, a longtime critic of Wall Street excess, has now aligned herself with the movement’s intellectual underpinnings. What this means: The conservative effort to turn blue collar whites and independents against the protesters and their broader populist message — exploiting a traditional cultural fault line in our politics — will now unfold in the context of a high profile political campaign.
WaPo, Greg Sargent, The Plum Line:Republicans slam Elizabeth Warren for embracing Occupy Wall Street
Elizabeth Warren has embraced OWS. In fact, she was fighting Wall Street long before it was cool. :-)
Elizabeth Warren is running for office in the most high-profile race in the country not involving Barack Obama. It’s a position that calls for some tact. So what does she think about the Occupy Wall Street protests that are roiling the country?
“I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” she says. “I support what they do.”
Warren’s boast isn’t bluster: As a professor of commercial law at Harvard and the force behind Obama’s consumer-protection bureau, Warren has been one of the most articulate voices challenging the excesses of Wall Street.
No one else has Warren’s gift to send the right into a sputtering frenzy.
The Daily Beast
So the Republicans want to play Archie Bunker politics. But Archie had a job and good benefits. Many blue collar workers now lack both, and those who have jobs have seen their wages stagnate or decline as the rich got richer.
Said NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh: “Warren’s decision to not only embrace, but take credit for this movement is notable considering the Boston Police Department was recently forced to arrest at least 141 of her Occupy acolytes in Boston the other day.”
snip
In other words, national Republicans are placing their bet. They are wagering that the cultural instincts of the working class whites and independents who will decide this race ensure that the excesses of the protesters will make them less inclined to listen to her populist economic message, which is also directed at those voters.
snip
Warren, by contrast, is making the opposite bet. By unabashedly embracing the protests, she is placing a wager on the true mood of the country right now.
WaPo, Greg Sargent, The Plum Line:Republicans slam Elizabeth Warren for embracing Occupy Wall Street
Elizabeth Warren is not afraid to take on the 1%ers. She does not tremble at Republican Archie Bunker politics and attacks by the wealthy on her as a "Harvard elitist."
Elizabeth Warren says she “came up the hard way…out of a hard-working middle class family in an America that created opportunities for kids like me.” She has made her life’s work fighting for middle class families. The Boston Globe calls her “… the plainspoken voice of people getting crushed by so many predatory lenders and under regulated banks.” TIME magazine has called her a “New Sheriff of Wall Street” and has twice included her among America’s 100 most influential people. She’s taken on big banks and financial institutions to win historic new financial protections for middle class families.
Elizabeth learned first-hand about the economic pressures facing middle class families. When she was twelve, her dad suffered a heart attack. The store where he worked changed his job and cut his pay, and the medical bills piled up. The family lost their car, and her mom went to work answering phones at Sears to pay the mortgage.
Elizabeth got her first job at nine, babysitting for a family across the street from her house. She started waiting tables at 13 at her Aunt Alice’s Mexican restaurant. All three of her brothers served in the military. She got married at 19, and after graduating from college, started teaching in elementary school. Her first baby, a daughter Amelia, was born when Elizabeth was 22.
When Amelia was two, Elizabeth started law school. Shortly after she graduated, her son Alex was born. She practiced law out of her living room, but she soon returned to teaching. Elizabeth has been a law professor at Harvard for nearly 20 years and has written nine books, including two national best-sellers, and more than a hundred articles.
http://elizabethwarren.com/...
Elizabeth Warren on The Myth of Class Warfare: Nobody Got Rich on His Own...
I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”—No!
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear.
You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.
You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.
You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
Her priorities and integrity frighten the 1%ers and their Republican toadies:
There are plenty of people in Washington looking out for the billion dollar corporations. My life’s work has been fighting for middle class families, taking on big banks, putting forward new ideas, and working to turn those ideas into a reality that makes a difference for people. That’s what I’ll do in the U.S. Senate.
I want you to know what I believe, where I stand, and what I think is worth fighting for: I want to help rebuild America’s middle class. I want a future filled with opportunities for those who work hard and play by the rules.
http://elizabethwarren.com/...
If you can afford a small donation, $10, $25, whatever you can will help, go here, because there are a lot of us in the 99% and the contributions add up.
Elizabeth Warren for Massachusetts
Let's make 2012 the end of Archie Bunker politics and the beginning of a new politics of the 99%ers.