By Conn Carroll
Talking Points Memos Benjy Sarlin & Evan McMorris-Santoro asked some Democratic operatives anonymously what they thought about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some were wary. So
this could end up being good for Dems the way the tea party was good for Republicans" an operative told TPM. Or it could end up scaring the crap out of folks."
You can file the above report from a CBS affiliate in Sacramento California under the scaring the crap out of folks file. My favorite is the guy explain why he came to join the protestors: Ive heard its anti-capitalist. Im a socialist. Im a Marxist-Communist.
Also check out Matt Stollers former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute reporting at naked capitalism:
It is going to be an interesting to watch how the organizations that are working either formally or informally on Obamas reelection campaign work first to praise and then to co-opt these protest campsites. Its unclear to me how this will happen if it will happen and how those groups will change in the process. One organization called Rebuild the Dream is focused on a message organized around The American Dream".
This organization was started by former White House staffer Van Jones and is packed with former Obama boosters who proclaimed their love for Obama in 2008. They are similarly ebullient about #OccupyWallStreet to them the people are finally rising. Interestingly the first speech I heard at #OccupyWallStreet during soapbox time was a fairly explicit rejection of the notion of an American dream.
Many people draw their inspiration from Tahrir Square hardly a fount of Americana circa 1950. In other words many of these people simply do not seem to be traditional liberals; they seem to see themselves as a transnational leftist class who believe gender race and economics are bound up into one struggle against oppression.
