Public Demonstrations

At the moment, to the delight of many of my friends, there is a public movement to occupy Wall Street in New York.  Wall Street is of course the home of corporate America, and the demonstration is intended to express public discontent with the behavior and power of large corporations, and urges the government to change their priorities from corporations to people.  I think it is a laudable goal to have government act in the interests of individual people, and I think very few people would argue with that statement.

This is essentially the Left's version of the Tea Party, which was a public demonstration to express disapproval of the government, and urging power over individual lives to be put in the hands of private entities, in particular individual people.  Over time the Tea Party morphed into a political movement, organized itself into an active part of the government, voted in candidates and has had a real effect on the actions of the government.  The Tea Party equates government action in general with acting against the interests of individual people.

I was a part of the largest global public demonstration of all time in advance of the Iraq War.  This demonstration was enormous, organized, deeply felt and reported around the world.  It had exactly zero effect on whether the war happened or not.  However, in almost every single country in the world that participated in the war, other than the USA, the politicians who had been responsible for joining the war where voted out of office.  When it came to actual politics, voting for candidates, the politicians were punished for their actions.  This did not happen in the USA because the majority of Americans were in favor of the war.

The demonstrations against the Vietnam War had no effect.  The demonstrations against corporate power in Seattle had no effect.  Demonstrations in, and of themselves have no effect.  This is exactly how it should be in a representative democracy.  In such a system the point at which the individual has a say in their government is in the voting booth.  If there is a massive demonstration against the actions of the government but the government is voted back into power then the majority of the country does not agree with the demonstration.  The loudest do not over-rule the majority, and we should be very pleased about this.

So, these demonstrations will have no effect unless a public display becomes a political movement that elects people with similar views to the demonstration.  This will only happen if the demonstrations become politically organized and puts forward candidates that can get elected.  Such candidates can only be elected in places where the majority of voters agree with the thrust of the arguments of the demonstration.  This means that at some point there need to be concrete, agreed opinions among a significant portion of the Left.  This is more difficult for the Left then the Right since there is a greater diversity of opinion among the Left.

Furthermore, this political group has to be large enough in office, and committed enough while in office, to make a difference to policy.  The Tea Party was large enough, and committed enough to refuse to vote for more mainstream Republican policies even at the expense of having Democratic policies be instituted.  A "People's Liberal Movement" would need to elect something like fifty representatives and a couple of senators to really make any difference.  This group would also have to risk the passing of right wing law rather than moderate, middle ground law in order for their opinions to have teeth.

However, the model of the Tea Party is instructive on what happens when such a movement out of the mainstream gets power.  The Tea Party had its highest approval ratings right before the last election, at around 37%.  After its actions in government it now has its lowest approval ratings ever at around 28%.  It has never really achieved a level at which more people approved than disapproved, but now over half the country disapprove of them, worse than Obama, the President who has only been in office with the economy in the tank.

I would guess that the majority of Americans do not approve of the Wall Street protesters, although there would be some commonality among some concerns with many Americans (the rich getting richer while we get poorer being the main one).  Without political power this movement will be pointless, possibly detrimental to the advance of liberal ideology.  While in office there is a good chance that the opinion of Americans will turn against them.

In US politics what happens is determined by the Middle.  Over time the Middle has moved consistently to the Left, at least on social issues.  This is still going on.  The Left is winning, but only as it manages to convince the Middle, and this happens generally by influencing the young.  This Wall Street demonstration will not sweep across America and change things forever.  It's greatest hope is to elect some politicians who can influence policy, and change the minds of some people in the Middle, edging policy to the Left.  This can only be done over the long term by appearing to the general public as reasonable people.  The more extreme the public movement the less effective it will be.