Partners?

("Democrats Try Wary Embrace of the Protests")

They are, at the moment, a very uncomfortable fit. The Occupy Wall Street ever growing contingent, and the Democratic party are not in a warm embrace, but should they be? Certainly there is a genuine distrust of everything government, and its failures to address the overwhelming needs of the 99%. But if the Occupy Wall Streeters have any friends in Washington, they can only be from one side of the aisle. While the Democrats have done a very poor job of effectuating their intended goals, at least there is a common theme in some of their messages. Raise taxes on the rich, regulate the big banks, provide stimulus so that we can end this frightening period of contraction and of separation between the few at the top and everyone else. Yet there are too many in the Democratic party who, like the Republicans, are too tightly aligned with big oil, big business and big banks and who have not strongly advocated for policies that benefit the 99%.

However, the Republicans have only the words of the Tea Partiers. They warn of attempted "class warfare" and of the need to protect the "job creators". For those like Cantor and Cain, their fondest wish must be for a cold and wet fall in the Northeast so that the heart of this movement is driven by Mother Nature into silence.

The Democrats are hurting. They have seen the promise of 2008 disappear and now face the real and growing possibility of a calamity in 2012. They need the energy and commitment of those who find fault with the system to be directed at attacking those whose message is antithetical to their cause. They need those whose voice is heard on the streets to be translated into Democratic votes at the ballot box come election time. They need the 99% if they are to stand the best chance to avoid humiliation.

The Occupy Wall Street group has seen the decimation created by the Bush era mistakes of deregulation, unfunded wars, tax cuts for the wealthy and pharmaceutical company handouts. They have watched in the era of Obama as the Republican party has watered down health care reform, threatened to throw this country into default, and taken steps each and every day to dismantle as much of the social safety net as possible. The aims of the Republican party are not those embraced by those in Zuccotti park in New York and in all the other Zuccotti parks that are multiplying around the country.

For now,it is nothing more than the possibility of a tentative and tenuous alliance between the protestors and the politicians on the left. Like all new romances, it has an uncertain future. But just because there is potential peril ahead, does not mean that a happy and productive marriage will not result.