Barack Obama should be careful what he wishes for in these days of rage. Heading into the 2012 election, his base is energized and mobilizing -- against him. His former foot soldiers are going AWOL.
Street protesters who began to "occupy" Wall Street and other downtown venues across the country this month aren't waving "Hope and Change" banners. In fact, Ron Paul signs are more prevalent.
As the demonstrations spread, some of Obama's union lackeys are joining in. But make no mistake: They're not in charge. This "99 percent" rabble isn't taking orders from the Democratic Party this time.
Ed Wujciak, a Hollywood, Fla., retiree attending an October2011 protest in Washington, D.C., is a prototypical Obama voter. Or at least he was. Now Wujciak and legions of "progressives" like him are fed up. Their mantra: "Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed."
"The overall mood here is disgust with the two-party system. As long as money runs politics, elections are a joke," said Wujciak, 65.
And that's not just the bitter cynicism that comes with age. Roughly half the demonstrators at Freedom Plaza last weekend were under 30 -- a cohort that went big for Obama in 2008.
Where Obama's support once approached 70 percent among the 18-29 crowd, that figure has fallen below 50 percent in the latest polls. Such attrition signals a return to voter apathy among young voters, and that spells trouble for the president.
Democratic Party operatives figure that the youthful, left-wing base will come home to Obama eventually. After all, where else are they going to go?
That same smug confidence by Republicans, who took their right flank for granted, helped doom John McCain. Hard-line conservatives simply sat out the 2008 election and planted seeds for the tea party revolt to come.
A floundering economy at home and continued wars abroad are sinking Obama today in a sea of progressive angst about America's political duopoly.
"We've become a one-party system with two wings: the psychopath wing and the collaborator wing," says Wujciak.
Or, as one placard in Washington put it: "The Lesser of Two Evils is Still Evil."
Tea party insurgents have been pressuring Republicans on the right since the GOP's 2008 debacle. But while the "Occupy Wall Street" movement and its fellow travelers have been called a leftist tea party, it doesn't taste quite right. Obama isn't serving the good stuff.
As enthusiasm for Obama wanes, once-true believers openly question his integrity and competence. Yes, "The One" continues to raise big bundles of cash from large donors -- and that's exactly the problem.
Corporate contributions and influence represent business as usual, and are anathema to the Wall Street occupationists. In their view, a "progressive" president cannot credibly wage class warfare when he himself is financially beholden to the business class.
Banners bearing side-by-side pictures of George W. Bush and Obama as "war criminals" aren't the kind of images that will keep the Democrats' hopes alive.
Meantime, with the economy staggering, Obama is left to ask voters if they feel they're better off than they were four years ago. Whether it's a laid-off middle-aged worker or a college grad who can't find a job, the answer is painfully obvious.
The historic wave of young voters and independents that swept Democrats to victory in 2008 won't switch en masse to Republicans, of course. But disillusioned voters aren't buying the "D" ticket headed by Obama, as evidenced by the shellacking his party suffered last year.
Since the United States doesn't (yet) have a viable third-party option, the default strategy for angry and/or unemployed liberals is to simply sit it out again in 2012.
Surveying the crowd of the president's former acolytes camped out in Washington, Wujciak sighed, "A lot of effort was expended getting Obama elected, and very little has changed."
Enthusiastic as the current spate of street protests may appear, that energy is not transferring to Democrats in the opinion polls. In our two-party system, that's a win for the GOP.
This is an opinion column: Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
