What if working class Americans actually like Occupy Wall Street? (25,000 new recruits in last week)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/what-if-working-class-americans-actually-like-occupy-wall-street/2011/10/17/gIQAniVzrL_blog.html

Posted at 02:23 PM ET, 10/17/2011

By Greg Sargent

It’s become an article of faith among some on the right, and even among some neutral commentators, that Obama and Dems risk losing the support of blue collar whites in swing states if they dare to whisper a word of praise for Occupy Wall Street.

But what if the opposite is true — what if working class white voters actually like and agree with Occupy Wall Street’s message, if not always with the cultural and personal instincts of its messengers?

The movement is still very young, and it’s very hard to gauge support for it. But one labor official shares with me a very interesting data point: Working America, the affiliate of the AFL-CIO that organizes workers from non-union workplaces, has signed up approximately 25,000 new recruits in the last week alone, thanks largely to the high visibility of the protests.

Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America, tells me that this actually dwarfs their most successful recruiting during the Wisconsin protests. “In so many ways, Wisconsin was a preview of what we’re now seeing,” Nussbaum says. “We thought it was big when we got 20,000 members in a month during the Wisconsin protests. This shows how much bigger this is.”

The cultural fault line and tensions between blue collar whites and liberal activists is a well established storyline in American history. But Working America — which organizes in industrial battlegrounds like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania and other swing states — is having a new burst of success among precisely the sort of working class voters who are supposed to be culturally alienated by the excesses of the Occupy Wall Street protestors.

FULL story at link.

Join Working America here: http://www.workingamerica.org/join/

[ixion]

1. the Dems had a Golden Opportunity to be populist heroes

and they failed miserably.

I don't know why anyone would think they would change now.

[Scuba]

2. The Dems in Washington are (mostly) Republicans. n/t

[phantom power]

3. It has been clear for some time that Americans would be receptive to liberal policies

Not that any of our leaders argue for them, which is sort of the point of OWS.

[Omaha Steve]

5. I agree with you

Who knew?

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Omaha Steve]

6. This was on Ed Schultz last night

I'm thankful MSNBC provides an alternative to the Fox propaganda channel.