Looking for Answers in Zuccotti Park

The hard question about identity politics has nothing to do with race or gender

I have now more than 31 articles about the Democrat’s defeat last Tuesday. I’m not finished with collecting these analyses. Most of the pieces make good, solid points. Here are some of them.

The economy. Racism. Sexism. Democrats too woke. Too much dependence on abortion issue. A rigged media system. Mishandling Immigration. Identity Politics. Prosecutions of Trump, Biden should have dropped out earlier. Misunderstanding growing Hispanic/Latino population. Too much emphasis on democracy. Wealth inequality. Too much focus on Trump. Biden’s unwillingness to restrain Netanyahu. Democrats too comfortable with military conflict.

Personally, I think there’s some truth to all of these points – but I look back farther than the Biden Administration or Kamala’s campaign in my search for answers. I look back to 2011, to find the seeds of Democrats’ defeat last week.

In the autumn of that year, a spontaneous movement developed, Occupy Wall Street. At the time, I was living in New York City, and I visited the encampments regularly and joined the marches. The crowds were large and diverse. In the coming weeks, what began as a spontaneous cry of desperation by frustrated and idealistic young people spread across the country. “Occupy” camps were set up from coast-to-coast as young people recognized that the system was rigged against them. The Big Banks and Wall Street were being bailed out by the US government, but ordinary people felt that they were being left behind.

And they were.

President Obama said he felt their pain, but more than soaring rhetoric was required. Obama’s economic team - Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, and James Rubin – was oriented toward balanced budgets, free trade and financial deregulation. Some economists credited economic growth in the 1990s to that formula, but the financial crisis of 2007-2008 required something more, as Paul Krugman noted in his book “End This Depression Now!” As Krugman put it, the Obama administration’s overly cautious policies were responsible for huge losses in foregone output and employment and caused long-term damage to economic potential.

Politically, we’re still dealing with that hangover today. Many of those young people who camping out in Zuccotti Park are now in their 30s, struggling now to pay rent or buy a home.

Crisis points like the 2007-2008 economic collapse present us with the ability to fundamentally change the existing system. President Obama did not take advantage of that opportunity for change, and the Democratic Party is paying for that today. The inchoate rage that fueled the Occupy encampments has now led many working-class citizens to abandon the Democratic Party as an entity that will fight for its interests. If the Democratic Party is to effectively contest MAGA, it must now take up the mantle of fighting for working people and the economically marginalized. This means confronting the large corporate interests, the same interests that fund so many political campaigns. This is very hard, but the country does not need another political party to fight for large corporate interests. Leave that to the Republicans.