Obama says that he wants to raise taxes on the rich, on the top two or three percent income earners, on Big Oil, on executive jets, on capital gains. In other words, not on you. Not on more than 90% of Americans. Republicans respond, “Obama wants to raise your taxes. He’ll raise taxes on your boss and your boss will fire you in retaliation. That guy who was going to offer you a job will change his mind. Tax hikes will kill the economy and you’ll get screwed.”
Polling that shows that the vast majority of Americans, including moderates and independents, favor taxing the rich to balance the budget do not factor in the fact that people are subjected to a relentless drumbeat of anti-tax rhetoric, even from people like Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist. They cynically (and falsely) claim that Obama is proposing these taxes to fire up his base despite the fact that he’s turning off moderates and independents. The truth is, moderates and independents endorse the president’s proposals in large numbers until they are subjected to people like Mark Penn telling them it is class warfare.
Barack Obama is careening down the wrong path towards re-election.
He should be working as a president, not a candidate.
He should be claiming the vital center, not abandoning it.
He should be holding down taxes rather than raising them.
He should be mastering the global economy, not running away from it.
And most of all, he should be bringing the country together rather than dividing it through class warfare.
Yes, too bad Obama won and Mark Penn isn’t running the show in the White House. Because Mark Penn is not only a man of the people, but he has his finger on their pulse.
What kind of pollster is it who doesn’t report what the people want but misreports what they want in order to confuse them and turn them against Democratic policies? He isn’t a Democratic pollster or a Republican pollster. He’s a pollster for the elite. He tries to shape opinion, not measure it. But, he’s not alone. This is the basic dynamic progressives face. The Democratic Party is the only viable vehicle we have. It is certainly the only vehicle we have capable of warding off a right-wing revolution in this country. But the rich have their fingers on the scale off both parties, tilting them away from policies that the people say they want.