Why Inequality Obsesses OWS/Obama

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. Barack Obama’s presidency was supposed to usher in The Great Liberal Restoration. With a conservative interregnum finally over, America could be nudged back onto the path toward becoming a European-style social welfare state. Here on the third anniversary of Obama’s 2008 election, however, those dreams lay in tatters. A recent poll by The Hill found that only one-in-three likely voters blames Wall Street for the country’s financial troubles, whereas 56 percent blame Washington. The public thinks the $800 billion Keynesian stimulus package was a miserable failure. ObamaCare is growing more unpopular by the day. Cap-and-trade is as dead as the dinosaurs. But left-of-center politicos think they might be getting a second bite at the apple. With the economy moribund—today’s anemic jobs report was more evidence of that—perhaps they can leverage the Occupy Wall Street movement into a broad backlash against business, markets, and free enterprise. (Oh, and against Republicans, too, natch.)