Dear Occupiers: Obama is NOT Your Friend

The Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true. -- Galadriel, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

I was up late last night, thinking about something that Dylan Ratigan said on Benzinga Radio this week, about the attempt by Democrats to co-opt and turn the Occupy movement into their version of what the Tea Party is for Republicans.

"When you look at the Occupation, and you understand that the person who is the responsible party for the codification in law the laws of platinum citizenship and too big to fail banks is Tim Geithner, who is President Obama's Treasury Secretary. That the person who is responsible for the foreclosure fiasco and refusal to engage on it is Tim Geithner. When you understand that the lack of prosecutions of any one individual banker in any way, shape or form is a direct result of the decisions of Barack Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder. For the Democrats to presume to represent the interests of the Occupation is as hypocritical as the Koch brothers' suggestion that they represent the Tea Party," Ratigan said.

This got me thinking about what the next step for the Occupy movement would be. It seems almost inevitable that the Democratic Party will try to swallow up the movement, make it their own, and use it to bash Republicans and win in 2012. From the Democrat perspective, it's a no-brainer. It would give them an instant, already-fired-up guaranteed voting bloc. They can use the message of ending Wall Street greed and corruption as their own campaign message, and raise money off it — further enhancing their chances at winning election.

It also plays to the narrative in the media, which is that there are exactly two sides to every story, and those two sides are forces opposed to one another in mortal, eternal combat. Left versus right. Good versus evil. America versus the Soviets, or the Terrorists, or whatever comes next. Since the Occupiers are more popular than the Tea Party right now, the theory is that this would be another positive for the Democrats.

Having the Democrats lend support would also give a framework to the movement that it currently lacks, and some allies in Congress that could then produce the legislation that meets the movement's goal. That'd be good, right?

Wrong. Wrong on every level. Wrong in so many ways. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

First, we have to realize what Ratigan is saying and what some of us are slowly realizing: Barack Obama and the Democrats are just as beholden to Wall Street as the Republicans. OK? Write that down 100 times until it sinks in. The Democrats talk a better game about social justice and equality, and they do have SOME progressives in Congress who genuinely want to help. But, for the most part, their voice is muted by the billions that Wall Street spends bribing Congress to do as they please.

Don't believe me? Look at the latest fundraising numbers. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Wall Street has donated more money to Barack Obama and to the Democratic National Committee in the past 6 months than it has to all the Republican Presidential candidates combined. More than ALL of them, combined. Do you think, when push comes to shove, that Obama is going to suddenly toss that support aside and regulate Wall Street? Prosecute criminal bankers? Are you high?

This is the same president who has sold us out on everything, EVERYTHING, for three years. Did we get a true reform of the health care system? No. We got a handout to insurance companies in exchange for a small increase in the number of people covered. Had the Republicans been in charge, we would have the same damn result, but with different companies benefiting.

Did Obama raise taxes on millionaires when he had the chance? Nope. He extended the Bush tax cuts with barely a fight. Sure, the claim was that Republicans held the country hostage by refusing to extend unemployment benefits unless we extended tax cuts for millionaires. But you know what? There are ways around that. We used TARP money for almost anything we wanted. You think maybe we could have found a loophole to keep benefits going and shut down the tax cuts? Not when Wall Street owns this White House.

If that isn't enough evidence for you, consider what Ratigan said. Tim Geithner is Barack Obama's Treasury Secretary. He also is the man who bailed out the banks by handing over your money to his rich friends, and then did nothing as those rich friends destroyed what was left of the economy by refusing to address the housing crisis. Eric Holder is the Attorney General who refused to prosecute ANY of these criminals.

Do you really think they're on your side in this?

If you want to make the argument that some of my friends make, which is that "Democrats might be bad, but the Republicans would be worse" then you need to stop and think about what you just said. What you just admitted, without realizing it, is that the system is broken. If your choices are BAD or WORSE, then the system is broken. And what is broken with the system is that both parties, all parties, have to rely on Wall Street to be electable.

They need the money because if one side doesn't take it, the other side will have an immense advantage.

So now, if you're the movement, why would you want to partner with the Democrats? Do you think that your voice will be heard over the sound of the cash register dinging with every million dollar donation? Do you think that anyone in the White House truly cares about fixing the problem?

Do you think Obama would risk his re-election chances to take your side over their millions?

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To comment on this (or any of my columns), visit my user page at Benzinga. You can also reach me by email john@benzinga.com or on twitter @johndthorpe.