JOEL KOTKIN: Democrats Move Left.

Much has been written about the right-ward shift of the Republican Party, but far less about a mounting left-wing movement among Democrats. While the media tends to dismiss the right-wingers of the GOP as “wingnuts,” it typically refrains from categorizing even the extreme left of the Democratic Party in a similar manner.

President Barack Obama has accelerated this leftward trend in two ways. First, his administration, particularly in contrast to that of former President Bill Clinton, has laid the rhetorical basis for a move to the left by shifting the party agenda on social, environmental and economic policies. Clinton may have declared that “the era of big government is over,” but under Obama an ever-expanding federal government has become the essential raison d’être for the party.

Yet if Obama’s soaring rhetoric set the stage, his weak record of achievement has sparked mounting concern among left-leaning activists. Obama’s success has hinged in part on the far-left portions of the party controlling their more-fevered passions, particularly about ever-increasing income inequality and bans on fossil fuel use.

But now many on the political left are openly critical of the president, notably for his close ties to the moguls of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. These moguls have been the predominant beneficiaries of his economic policies while middle-class incomes have continued to languish – and even fall.

Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Tapes showing meek oversight of Goldman are about to rock Wall Street.

Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

MAYBE THIS IS WHY OBAMA’S POLLING BADLY EVEN IN BLUE STATES: William Galston: The Recovery That Left Out Almost Everybody.

More than five years after the official end of the recession, the Public Religion Research Institute finds, only 21% of Americans believe the recession has ended.

Two recent reports help explain the disconnect between the official jobs numbers and the economic experience of most Americans. Every fall, the U.S. Commerce Department issues a detailed analysis of trends in income, poverty and health insurance. Although economists have some technical quibbles with the Commerce data, the broad trends are unmistakable.

This year’s report found that median household income was $51,939 in 2013, 8% lower than in 2007, the last year before the recession. Households in the middle of the income distribution earned about $4,500 less last year than they had six years earlier. No wonder 56% of Americans told the Pew Research Center that their incomes were falling behind the cost of living.

The Federal Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances confirms these findings. Between 2010 and 2013, the Fed reports, median family income fell by 5%, even though average family income rose by 4%. This is, note the authors, “consistent with increasing income concentration during this period.” Only families in the top 10%, with annual incomes averaging nearly $400,000, saw gains during these three years.

So President Goldman Sachs delivered big returns to the fatcats, at the expense of everyone else. Go figure.

CORNEL WEST IS NOT SO HAPPY: “He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency”

Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

BETRAYAL! Lefties Aghast as Leaked Global Trade Deal Turns Out To Be About . . . Financial Deregulation. Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

TO MY KNOWLEDGE, HE’S NEVER FALSELY CLAIMED NATIVE AMERICAN ANCESTRY: Is Dave Brat the “Elizabeth Warren of the Right”?

It’s certainly possible to take the Warren analogy too far; Brat doesn’t have the same devoted following as Warren or her Ivy League academic prestige, and he lacks a parallel position within the conservative firmament. But it’s not a bad comparison, as far as it goes. And it touches on some of the ways that liberal populism and conservative or libertarian-tinged populism often overlap—the distrust of elites, frustration with those in power, and anger over the ways that big government and big business, so often assumed to be titanic opponents, work in tandem against the interests of the masses.

It also suggests the political power of this populist critique, even on the right. In recent years, liberals have successfully channeled anger against the joining of businesses interests and political power, but Republican politicians have not been nearly as effective in their attempts to do so, despite the current of anti-elite sentiment that runs through the Tea Party. There are many reasons why the GOP hasn’t been as successful (its reliance on corporate donors, its professional connections with corporate lobbying groups, the fact that many of its candidates are themselves part of the business class), but one reason why is that criticism of business, big or small, is simply not part of the identity the GOP has built for itself over the last several decades. That’s not the language it speaks; the GOP is the party that represents business, not the party that criticizes corporate power.

Dave Brat, on the other hand, knew how to speak that language, and it turned out to be particularly effective against an eager, ambitious establishmentarian widely viewed as out of touch with the local interests of his constituents.

It’s paywalled, but Kimberley Strassel makes a similar point in the WSJ. Excerpt:

Mr. Brat reprised his themes for Fox News’s Sean Hannity the night of his victory, explaining: “We need to take free markets seriously. That means we have to put an end to all these tax credits and tax deductions and loopholes. [Michigan Rep.] Dave Camp had a good bill which simplified the tax code and had a Reagan-esque 10 and 25 percent rate. That made sense and it was going to be pro-growth.” This clearly resonated with the 56% of voters who chose to rout a sitting majority leader. . . .

Mr. Brat openly derided “Making Life Work,” referring to its “catchy little phrases to compete with Democrats for votes.” As he told Mr. Hannity: “I do not want the federal government trying to make my life work.” Mr. Brat also ably tied together the cronyism/complexity/growth arguments to make the case for real tax reform (rather than Democrat-lite tax spending).

The hallmark of conservative policy innovation is the use of markets to limit government and expand citizen freedom and choice. That’s reform. The lesson of the Brat-Cantor race is that the traditional reform concept is still popular (and populist). At least when it’s delivered with economic understanding and conviction.

Given that President Goldman Sachs is in the pocket of Wall Street, and that the Dems are championing policies that benefit the very rich and the very poor at the expense of the middle class, this would seem to be a fruitful line of attack.

And, unsurprisingly: The House GOP Represents More Low-Wage Workers Than Do Democrats. Check out the map.

Related: Ed Morrissey: The Absurdity Of Leadership Fights In An Era Of Populism. “Cantor became part of the institutions rather than someone who could represent his district’s interests in contrast to them. Cantor missed the populist swing in his district, and the House GOP seems to be missing it in general.”

NOTHING BUT CRONIES ALL THE WAY DOWN: As Matt Drudge notes in his paraphrase of this Bloomberg article, “Warren Buffett to Pay $0 to Be Among Goldman Sach’s Top Shareholders…”

Goldman Sachs — why does that name ring a bell?

THIS NEWS WILL PLAY WELL AT THE CORNER: Duran Duran’s John Taylor: Biden a ‘D*ck’ in Debate, Likes Ryan.

Bruce Springteen will be touring for Obama, but then, like President Goldman Sachs, he’s pretty much an old-line One Percent establishment guy anyhow.

FINALLY, OCCUPY WALL STREET HAS A CANDIDATE THEY CAN BELIEVE IN:

● “New book shows U.S. top earners pay larger share of taxes than any other industrialized nation”

— Kerry Picket of the Washington Times today.

● Mitt Romney to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on taxes, “I want high income people to continue to pay the same share they do today.” 

— Headline on CNN Website today.

Forget President Goldman Sachs. If OWS really wants to stick it to the man, there’s only once choice for them in this election.

IT’S A GOOD ARGUMENT, AND IT HAS THE ADVANTAGE OF BEING TRUE: Super-PAC ads look to tie Obama to Wall Street and turn off his supporters.

Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

THE NATION SAYS THAT THE REAL HILARY ROSEN SCANDAL is that she’s just another of the many corporate whores who have surrounded Obama:

Per a senior Dem: “Serious Dem operatives are aghast at Hilary Rosen’s misguided attack on Ann Romney’s work history. She and others at PR firm SKD Knickerbocker have represented many clients that have raised hackles with senior White House staff. It’s an open secret in the Dem consultant community that SKD has been signing up clients based on ‘perceived White House access’ tied to prior relationships and employment.”

As we’ve reported, SKDKnickerbocker is led by a team of former Democratic operatives and key White House figures. But instead of promoting a progressive agenda, or even an Obama agenda, these consultants score huge contracts by helping corporate interests lobby for policies that are not in line with the public interest. Many SKDKnickerbocker employees, including Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director, are also frequent White House visitors.

We’ve compiled a partial list of SKDKnickerbocker’s clients. Since the firm refuses to register as an ordinary lobbying firm, we don’t know their full roster of clients.

My favorite: “SKDKnickerbocker was hired to push for billions in tax breaks for already profitable corporations.”

Then, of course, there’s her history as an attack dog for the music industry. Well, what do you expect? They don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

This kind of climate comes down from the top. Related: Why Hilary Rosen visited at the White House. Including 5 meetings with President Goldman Sachs.

BLOOMBERG: Obama Relies on Debt Collectors Profiting From Student Loan Woe. “With $67 billion of student loans in default, the Education Department is turning to an army of private debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on borrowers. Working on commissions that totaled about $1 billion last year, these government contractors face growing complaints that they are violating federal laws by insisting on stiff payments, even when borrowers’ incomes make them eligible for leniency. . . . In failing health, after contracting hepatitis from a blood transfusion, Campos pleaded with Pioneer, owned by SLM Corp. (SLM), the nation’s largest student-loan company better known as Sallie Mae. He left a $40,000-a-year job at the Massachusetts health department when he got too sick to work and waited for a liver transplant. The 52-year-old former busboy, a naturalized U.S. citizen from El Salvador, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the 1990s from Cambridge College in Massachusetts.”

Occupy the Department of Education! Or, you know, the White House. Just the kind of behavior you’d expect from the administration of President Goldman Sachs! (Bumped).

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Noticed your post regarding student loan providers engaging in hard-headed collection practices. You might want to also consider another feature of student loans that I believe resembles loan-sharking. After graduation, many students consolidate their loans into a single loan. This is because each year a student is in school, a new loan is made. Sometimes there are multiple loans in a single year, due to different kinds of eligibility, etc. This means that a graduating student can often have a half-dozen or more individual loans to manage. Student loan providers helpfully allow consolidation of all these loans into a single loan with a fixed interest rate. Now here’s the rub. Once consolidated, the loans cannot be refinanced and the borrower is locked to the same interest rate no matter how low market rates might go. There have been bills introduced to allow student loan refinancing, but so far the lenders have lobbied heavily against allowing the practice and the bills have failed. This means that a student who borrowed during a period of high rates is locked to those rates, potentially for decades, without any real recourse.

No name on this one. I am in administration now.

A report from the Dark Side!

BLOOMBERG: Obama Relies on Debt Collectors Profiting From Student Loan Woe. “With $67 billion of student loans in default, the Education Department is turning to an army of private debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on borrowers. Working on commissions that totaled about $1 billion last year, these government contractors face growing complaints that they are violating federal laws by insisting on stiff payments, even when borrowers’ incomes make them eligible for leniency. . . . In failing health, after contracting hepatitis from a blood transfusion, Campos pleaded with Pioneer, owned by SLM Corp. (SLM), the nation’s largest student-loan company better known as Sallie Mae. He left a $40,000-a-year job at the Massachusetts health department when he got too sick to work and waited for a liver transplant. The 52-year-old former busboy, a naturalized U.S. citizen from El Salvador, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the 1990s from Cambridge College in Massachusetts.”

Occupy the Department of Education! Or, you know, the White House. Just the kind of behavior you’d expect from the administration of President Goldman Sachs!

#OCCUPYFAIL: Walter Russell Mead: Occupy Blue Wall Street. “Members of what Howard Dean likes to call ‘the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party’ prefer not to think too much about Blue Wall Street and its role in the Democratic coalition, but particularly as times get tougher for the blue social model, it is Blue Wall Street that makes things work and calls the shots. For Blue Wall Street the conflict between the interests of the private sector and the power of the government does not really exist. The symbiosis between Blue Wall Street and the state is strong and deep. The pension funds, bond issues and other financial transactions that blue city and state governments need helps nourish Blue Wall Street; Blue Wall Street helps integrate the policy agenda of other government focused interest groups with larger national priorities and movements. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the archetypes of this symbiosis: they are government-backed forces in the capital markets built around support for the single most important American social program of the blue period: home ownership. . . . Blue Wall Street benefits much more from the blue social model than the other elements in the coalition. Five figure cop salaries and low six figure salaries for goo-goo social engineers pale before the seven, eight, nine and ten figure paydays on the Street. There is a direct connection between those big paydays and the connection between big finance, big government and Democratic (as well as Republican) interest group politics. Good relations with politicians help make money: ask the leadership of Goldman Sachs.”

Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

THE CORZINE SCANDAL: Another Black Eye For Blue Wall Street. “Remember two years ago when President Obama was vigorously campaigning in New Jersey, hoping that the Democratic Party wouldn’t face a humiliating gubernatorial defeat? Maybe he should have campaigned harder. If nothing else, it might have kept Democratic candidate for Governor Jon Corzine away from MF Global. The company’s recklessness—with clients’ money, no less—is precisely the kind of story that the Democratic Party doesn’t want as Wall Street stands occupied. (Via Meadia hopes by the way that this was all a terrible misunderstanding and that Governor Corzine’s reputation will somehow emerge intact from the debacle, but at this point we aren’t holding our breath.)”

Plus this: “The Democrats can bark at Blue Wall Street, but they cannot really bite. A few little puppy nips, perhaps, but any efforts by the Democrats to throw Wall Street under the bus will fail. Blue Wall Street is the bus, and it refuses to roll over itself.”

Hey, they don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

UPDATE: Crony Capitalism: Corzine used leverage to keep regulators from investigating MF Global. Plus: “Mona Charen notes that this makes Barack Obama’s attack on Republicans look more like a case of projection.”

#OWSBLOWBACK: Protester: fundraisers tie Obama to ‘money elite’. Gee, do you think?

Kevin Zeese observed to WMAL.com that “President Obama, with his one billion dollar campaign, is holding fundraisers that cost $38,500 to get into.” Zeese noted that the fundraiser cost is “higher than the median individual income for Americans, which is $1,000 less.” He added that such a fundraiser “puts Obama out of touch with the people and very much in touch with the money elite.”

President Obama has raised over $64 million so far for his reelection campaign. Charlie Spiering of The Washington Examiner recently detailed a two day, seven fundraiser cash-crawl by Obama that included a stop at one of those high-dollar fundraisers.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., lectured the Occupy Wall Streeters a couple days ago, saying they made him ‘unhappy’ for not supporting Democrats in 2010.

They don’t call him President Goldman Sachs for nothing.

YA THINK? In Private, Bankers Dismiss Protesters As Unsophisticated.

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Generally, bankers dismiss the protesters as gullible and unsophisticated. Not many are willing to say this out loud, for fear of drawing public ire — or the masses to their doorsteps. “Anybody who dismisses them publicly is putting a bull’s-eye on their back,” the hedge fund manager said.

I’m dismissing them publicly. They’re tools of President Goldman Sachs. The bankers have much to answer for, but these people aren’t even smart enough to ask the questions. And if I were the Wall Streeters, I’d be negotiating a move to Dallas, as rumor has it they’re considering.

MICHAEL WALSH: COMPARE AND CONTRAST: “About the only thing the Tea Party and the unwashed rabble occupying Zuccotti Park have in common is their deep loathing for the financial and political nomenklatura who precipitated the economic collapse of 2008 and — thanks to their generous campaign donations to politicians — have emerged unscathed while the rest of us suffer. Any other resemblance is purely coincidental.”

President Goldman Sachs was unavailable for comment.

Related: WaPo: Occupy Wall Street protests reveal liberal tensions. “How good can Obama be when he needs so much Wall Street money?”

RECOVERY BUMMER (CONT’D): Recession Officially Over, US Incomes Kept Falling. “Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June 2009 — household income fell 3.2 percent. The finding helps explain why Americans’ attitudes toward the economy, the country’s direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even as the economy has been growing.”

Hey, Goldman Sachs is doing okay.

MARK STEYN: ANARCHISTS FOR BIG GOVERNMENT. “Underneath the familiar props of radical chic that hasn’t been either radical or chic in half a century, the zombie youth of the Big Sloth movement are a ludicrous paradox.”

This parody, seen on Facebook, says it all . . .

As I keep pointing out, if you’re not protesting against President Goldman Sachs, you’re not protesting against “Wall Street.” You’re just a hack. Sorry.

UPDATE: Reader Eliot Picard writes:

In observing the Occupy protests, including milling about the crowds in Boston near my office, it is quite apparent that the student loan debt bomb is probably the main impetus for these actions. It goes without saying that the students and former students facing non-bankruptable debt and minimal job prospects have a legitimate grievance although we may certainly disagree on what needs to be done. One question that keeps occurring to me is whether the colleges and universities that encourage degrees in various useless humanities disciplines bear some significant responsibility for this crisis.

One can only assume that presidents, deans, provosts, etc. know fully well that there is a limited market for degrees in Wommyn’s Studies, Language Arts and the like. My mother, ever the incisive wit, G-d bless her, called the graduates of such programs “unemployable at a higher level”. Indeed, when I finished a double major B.A. in Biology and Philosophy (Rensselaer Polytech, class of 1990) and expressed interest in graduate level philosophy I was told that the school had shut down the Ph.D. program to discourage students from doing much more in the field that I had done already. Clearly RPI knew that allowing and encouraging such a path of study was tantamount to academic malpractice. This sort of sane pedagogical judgement, from which I benefitted in my impetuous youth, has been missing across the rest of academia.

Is there some room for legal action to “claw back” arguably misspent tuition dollars from the universities (IANAL so forgive my obvious misuse of that term). I cannot but think that there has to be some sanction against those universities and their officials who were more than happy to take the big tuition checks while failing to look after the interests of the students in their charge.

One suspects that if this were deemed likely, the AAUP wouldn’t be endorsing the protests. But, of course, that’s right. If any other industry lured 18-year-olds into lifetime debt based on misrepresentations about the value of what it was selling, the executives would already be social pariahs and criminal defendants. I’m in favor of allowing student loan debt to be discharged in bankruptcy, and of forcing the universities to eat part of it in the process. I also think that prospective students should be informed of the percentage of enrolees who graduate, the average indebtedness of graduates (dropouts), and the percentage of that debt that is in default, or over 60 days late. Perhaps this could be subdivided by major to provide a more useful picture of what people are getting into.

BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY:

The Obama administration has become a house of mirrors.

Wall Street is the wicked enemy.

Geithner is Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs is everywhere in the Obama admin.

Rise up against the evil bankers!

Pay off the evil bankers!

The evil bankers must direct our economy policy or we are doomed!

Like I said yesterday: If you’re not protesting against President Goldman Sachs, you’re not protesting against “Wall Street.” You’re just a hack. Sorry.

SURE, WHY NOT? What We Really Need is Anti-Corporate Anarchy, With Our ‘Organizers and the Law Team’ Writing Our Demands. “Anarchy — you keep using that word. I do not think it means…No, actually, you’re using absolutely spot-on, even if you don’t know it.” It’s not anarchy until it’s been through the approved committee process.

But really: If you’re not protesting against President Goldman Sachs, you’re not protesting against “Wall Street.” You’re just a hack. Sorry. “The modern anarchists are just the far-left’s muscle. Look at when and where they show up, who they march with and for, and how carefully the press ignores them and their acts.”

A RESPONSE to some Occupy Wall Street demands.

My question is, why aren’t they presenting their demands to President Goldman Sachs at the White House? Where do they think Obama’s campaign donations came from? Who has gotten rich — and bailed out — under his Administration?