Greg Sargent: "Populism goes mainstream"

Greg Sargent:

Beyond whatever fate awaits Occupy Wall Street, one thing is now clear: Efforts to marginalize the critique of the current system that the protests embody — and the larger arguments about inequality and economic fairness that they have set in motion — as radical or extreme are proving a complete failure.

Polls are showing that pluralities or majorities agree with the protests — including the moderate voters who are supposed to be culturally alienated by outsized protest tactics. New Yorkers continue to embrace the protests. Dem candidates, refreshingly, are refusing to be frightened away by GOP efforts to tie them to the protesters’ excesses. Top shelf columnists are earnestly discussing the protests as an important phenomenon, regardless of their durability, and concluding that it’s time for a serious national conversation about inequality, economic justice, and what our failure to address these issues portends for the future. Obama advisers are claiming that they will be central to Campaign 2012.

And perhaps most tellingly, the “class warfare” shrieks from the right are growing louder. MORE..

Howie P.S.: I am still waiting for Governor Moonbeam to utter a word or two on this.