Liberals urge Obama to go after Wall Street harder

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

JOSH LEDERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Message from liberals to President Barack Obama: Your economic message is muddled, go after Wall Street harder.

With the November election looming, some of the president's most ardent backers are fretting that the incumbent Democrat isn't successfully making the case for a second term at a time of economic turmoil. And they argue that he should sharpen his message by taking a firm stand against the financial sector's excesses.

"If he really took on Wall Street big time, if he told the story of how Wall Street are villains, made them the enemy, we could take them down," Paul Sasso, a 47-year-old liberal from San Diego, said this week. "To me, that could win him the election, I'm sure."

It was a sentiment similarly expressed by more than a dozen other self-described progressive activists attending this week's Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20120621/D9VH7BUO0.html

---

In this June 2, 2012 file photo, Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren speaks in Springfield, Mass. Liberals have groused about President Barack Obama since he was elected, lamenting a lack of progress on issues they hold dear. Even so, most liberal voters are expected to vote for Obama in November over Republican Mitt Romney. But there's no guarantee that liberals, if they continue to be dissatisfied, will turn out to man phone banks and canvass neighborhoods this fall. His fundraising efforts could also take a hit. Their latest beef: that Obama needs to take the fight to Wall Street, much like Warren, the Democratic Senate nominee in liberal-leaning Massachusetts, who has built a national brand around the us-versus-them rhetoric that took root over the past year in the encampments of the Occupy Wall Street movement. For Obama, taking up the Occupy cause as overtly as that carries risks in the dozen or so competitive states that will determine who wins the White House. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

[AnotherMcIntosh]

1. Urging him at this point to go after Wall Street harder (or at all) is going to make a difference?

Not a chance.

The best that we can say is "He's not Rmoney."

[OnyxCollie]

2. At best, Obama might ask Jamie Dimon to give back the cufflinks. nt

[cstanleytech]

3. But what about holding congress and the senate responsible to? No president has

Carte Blanche to do what this article discusses which is to go after Wall Street other than via the DOJ and if no laws are being broken then the DOJ is pretty much powerless isnt it?

[msongs]

4. ok, he could PRETEND to go after wall street just for show and PR purposes. act like it eh? nt

[jeff47]

5. Congress can't make past acts illegal

Any new laws passed by Congress could not make any past acts by Wall Street illegal. Laws are "from this point on, ______ is illegal".

So this really is up to the DOJ.

As for "if no laws are being broken"....

[phiddle]

7. There's Plenty of illegal activity indicated

in information which is public. Unfortunately, the Obama justice department has not seen fit to investigate, much less prosecute it.

[rhett o rick]

6. Good grief. Are you on the side of Wall Street? You can ALWAYS go after them.

And laws have been broken. He can go after them in lots of ways if he wanted to. Why do Democrats want to be soft on WAll Street?

[cstanleytech]

9. Rhett, more is needed than just your opinion that laws have been broken.

Specifically what is need is a thing called evidence, without that the best DA in the world wont get a conviction that would hold up on appeal and trying to twist it with innuendo that I or others support Wall Street doesnt change that one simple fact.

[dotymed]

13. Well yes, laws are broken on Wall St. constantly.

It really is not the point though. Obama could attack Wall St. immorality and urge a return to regulation.


Of course, since citizens united, it would destroy his fund raising. Everything is about money and power, especially in politics.

[cstanleytech]

15. He could sure but will congress and the senate agree and support tighter controls? I kinda doubt the

congress would since they are controlled by the republicans atm.

[rhett o rick]

19. To even consider that laws havent been broken seems naive to me.

In any case we (our DoJ and/or SEC) should be aggressively pursuing the Wall Street criminals. The President has a lot of weapons at his disposal. Time has long passed to run Wall Street out of town on a rail.

[cstanleytech]

22. I never said I dont believe they arent I said there is a lack of evidence.

Big difference.

[rhett o rick]

23. Sorry if I misunderstood, but I would be greatly surprised that there is

a lack of evidence. Cheating, pushing the limit of the laws, are part of business.

[jtuck004]

8. I am guessing these are employed liberals. A number of the unemployed ones maybe wish he would

put forward a jobs program that would put a significant percentage of the 25 million who need work back into it.

And from that growth perhaps we can fund the hundreds of lawyers and investigators it's going to take to even bring a charge of check bouncing against the greedy bastards, much less a fraud case for their, well, fraud.

[cstanleytech]

11. Obama has tried to put forth such job programs, its the republicans who are stonewalling it. nt

[jtuck004]

12. He took office when the country was losing 800,000

jobs a month, and proceeded to work on sending money to the health insurance companies, while doing the least that could be done by the government for jobs, while waiting for the private industry fairy to fix that part. Stood in front of the bankers and said "I am the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks". To people who were part of organizations that donated large amounts of money to his campaign.

An alternative would have been to say "These greedy bastards just created the greatest financial disaster the world has ever known. Will you, the American people, invest your tax money in repairing it, and pay to investigate possible crimes, or should we reward the perpetrators of fraud? There are millions of you in pain, and there are a few hundred people who are profiting from that. Who will stand with me?"

Instead people are still beholden to the banks, demand is shit so people aren't being hired, there are more people in poverty than 4 years ago, 10 million home loans are underwater, 50 million people (instead of the 35 million we started with) do not have health insurance. And we got a whole list of his accomplishments, some of which are amazing, but pale in comparison to kids going to bed hungry at night, or a parent who is working full-time but can't afford a decent place to live because everyone is too chickenshit to create a jobs program that only Democrats can do. And take on the bankers.

His accomplishments stand next to tens of millions of people are in poverty, homeless, or at 50 have been laid off from what may well have been the last job they will ever work.

I will vote for him because his opponent is a delusional son of a rich guy who used junk bonds to profit by wreaking personal tragedy on working people, perhaps millions of them when you add in all his buddies that were doing it at Blackstone, KKR, others. A guy who has to buy his wife $600 t-shirts so she won't make fun of him.

But I will never think that what was done was anything but the least that could have happened. And if he loses in November, I will always think it was because people's very real pain was shuffled aside in favor of supporting greedy bastards.

As far as stonewalling, I live in a world where excuses really don't mean that much.

[Huey P. Long]

14. Good post. -eom

[blkmusclmachine]

10. Nah, that'd require some REAL leadership:

And not the phony-balony bull$h!t kind they peddle as "bi-partisanship" in DC these days.

[Blue_Tires]

16. someone at the AP reads DU?

[Puzzledtraveller]

17. Most of the biggest wallstreet investors supported O

He's not going after anyone, they need him in office. And, before I get flamed for that tidbit, they will grease the pockets of anyone else who comes close to the office so that they will always have a friend in the whitehouse. Dont fool yourselves, President Obama is no robinhood to the people. He's crooked, Romneys crooked, we're basically scewed.

[bvar22]

18. This Liberal certainly does.

President Obama should "Welcome their Hatred",

instead of welcoming their Money.

"For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace --business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me... and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master." --FDR



http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/us/fdr1936.html

THAT is what Democrats used to sound like!

...and THAT would get "Liberals" (old mainstream/Center FDR/LBJ Democrats) to the polls,
along with most Americans who have to Work for a Living.
THAT would get me "All Fired Up!"

Yes. We. CAN!



You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

[bluedot95]

20. Spam deleted by gkhouston (MIR Team)

[slackmaster]

21. Did DU really need another porn thread?

[libodem]

24. Yes

Not only YES but HELL YES!!!!!!!