"Populism has gone mainstream"

[merrily]

19. OWS, especially OWS Boston, which is credited with having given new life to Orwell's "99%",

had an incalculable impact.

Before OWS: "So, specifically how will we be cutting entitlements and by exactly how much (to start)?"

The January 2009 promise by Obama to cut entitlements;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR2009011504114.html

The 2010 naming by Obama of the Cat Food Commission, aka the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, headed by the notorious Simpson (R) and manned, in part, by Paul Ryan, bringing him to national prominence (watch out for the word "reform&quot , even before final passage of the ACA;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Reform

The whispered offer in May 2011 from a hot miked Clinton (Bubba) to Ryan to help persuade Democrats to "reform" Medicare;

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/05/bill-clinton-to-paul-ryan-on-medicare-election-give-me-a-call/

Conyers calling out Obama in July 2011 for putting Social Security and Medicare on the table, even though Boehner and Cantor had not asked Obama for them.

http://www.crewof42.com/news/conyers-on-jobs-weve-had-it-lays-out-obama-calls-for-protest-at-white-house/

Sperling, a member of the Obama White House comes up with the idea of a budget sequester, though he denies having done so (after being caught he gives as his reason for the denial that the Republicans modified his idea, rather than accepting it exactly as he suggested it. (No, really, that was his excuse.) Gee, who could ever possibly foresee that Republicans would not accept a budget measure from the Obama White House exactly as it was, with no modification whatever?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_sequestration_in_2013

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/exclusive-the-woodward-sperling-emails-revealed-88226.html


Naming by Obama in August 2011 of the possibly (probably?) unconstitutional Super Committee, aka "the Grand Bargain Committee," aka the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction

http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/11/news/economy/debt_committee_members/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011


BUT THEN,

People like Hedges plan and begin publicizing an "occupation" of Washington D.C., to begin on October 6, 2011, which has its own website, but Occupy Wall Street starts sooner, in September 2011; and Hedges, Seeger and many others appear in NYC instead.

Politicians, including Obama, go full into 2016 re-election mode and they don't campaign on cutting entitlements. However, the WH comes up with the concept of a sequester, which gets triggered in 2013--after the 2012 re-election of Obama.

Changing a national conversation so quickly after all the events and momentum only hinted at in this post on almost zero dollars is a phenom the guys and gals in ad agencies would love to know how to duplicate.

OWS does not get a fraction of the credit it deserves and I wholly distrust every Dem who pooh poohs it, or worse.