Although OWS is ostensibly about the 99%, I think it is critically fueled by fears of the middle class.
There can be no doubt that middle class Americans suffered terribly over the last few years. Not just financially, but psychologically. In a very short period of time, they took a couple of steps towards the brink. Today, most middle class Americans are one serious illness away from financial disaster. The cushion of home equity has been erased, and many households have experienced a layoff, a drop in earnings, or an early retirement.
A George Carlin quote is apt: “You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there... just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.”
Like every good joke, it’s funny because there is some truth to it.
However, I think OWS has so much resonance today because the middle class are more scared than ever. Many have seen neighbors, family, or friends drop from the middle class into the ranks of the working poor. They see that it might happen to them.
Not long ago, kleinbl00 posted a great Steinbeck quote here: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
Once again, it’s funny for its truth. However, for the middle class of the US today, it’s become very difficult sentiment to entertain. Instead of being middle class professionals looking for that big break, they are conspicuously stressed out wage earners, hoping to dodge disaster.
But why OWS now? I think that two key factors are in play:
1: The dust has settled after the Great Recession, a European debt crisis looms, and it’s become apparent that a quick recovery is not in the cards. It’s evident that the middle class is not getting out of this situation any time soon. It is now clear that they must live with this new fear.
2: Campaign season in the US has begun, and this fear is not being validated. The ear of politicians in the US is not held by the middle class, and although this has been the way of things for some time, this tone-deafness is of particular consequence now.
I believe that OWS has momentum because of feelings of fear and disenfranchisement in the middle class. They want to be heard, and no power can hear them. The middle class is the largest voting block. Typically, the Democrats would benefit from this situation, but I don’t think that’s possible now. Obama has accepted solutions that discredit his ability to allay their fears. I think that middle class Americans feel abused and without options.
As a result, I see that it is very probable that an independent candidate will be pulled into this vacuum that fuels the OWS. If a candidate validates these fears of the middle class, I think they could become a viable contender in the next election.
OWS is the domestic manifestation of the Arab Spring and of the London riots. It is the dissatisfaction of the majority with the influence of the minority. I think these two bookends are good to compare because, in my opinion, OWS is precisely between the two.
First, Arab Spring. The uprising of young Islam in many Arab states is a function of a young, internet-savvy electorate chafing under the rule of authoritarian regimes which they view as stifling their desired way of life. "What they wanted" and "how they were going to get it" were very clear - they wanted the governments that were oppressing them out of office and they were going to get it through any means necessary, even if that meant dying for it.
Compare and contrast with the London riots. The uprising of disaffected British youth in London, Birmingham and elsewhere wasn't a function of oppression, it was a function of diminished opportunity. Structural unemployment for youth in Britain is unacceptably high and when the spark of totalitarianism ignited the latent distrust of the ever-growing surveillance state of the UK, it went up like a bomb. However, the UK doubled down their authoritarian rule and basically jackbooted their way out of difficulty.
Unemployment and lack of opportunity in the Arab world is a very real problem, but it's not a new problem. The economies of Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere were certainly in a downswing but Libya wasn't. The drive there was political and focused. Unemployment and lack of opportunity in England, on the other hand, is a Blair-era problem. Deficit as a function of GDP in the UK is much higher than it is in the US and has been climbing even faster. The UK had its own mortgage crisis, had its own bank bailouts, and has its own (very serious) financial armageddon looming on the horizon.
Now, Occupy Wall Street. Clearly, OWS is born of unemployment. OWS is born of household financial instability. OWS is born of a sense that hard work is no longer rewarded. In that way, it has a lot in common with the London riots. And while OWS has a political element, the OWS movement has yet to gel around a concrete goal. That's not a "failure of leadership" or a "lack of vision" but more a function of "concrete goals" in this case being rather tumultuous and violent.
OWS could settle on something like "re-instate Glass-Steagall." They could be even more radical and rally around "restore the Gold Standard." They could go for something manageable like "restore taxation to 1992 brackets." None of these completely sensible, entirely reasonable demands is going to provide healthcare to the people who need it, however. It's not going to put the evicted back in their houses. It's not even going to "teach those Wall Street bastards a lesson" - not in the immediate observable future, anyway. Not only that but it's a hell of a lot harder to rally an angry mob around "restore Glass-Steagall" than "down with Mubarak."
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Which has little to do with an "independent candidate." However, neither did the arguments you put forth. The argument for an "independent candidate" would be someone who has the ability to right the wrongs put forth by OWS. That was kind of the sentiment behind Carter; what Carter discovered is that without the backing of the existing political elite, you can get exactly fuckall done regardless of how badly you want it. Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize 22 years after becoming a 1-term president.
What the Tea Party knew, what the Green Party knows, what the Libertarian Party knows is that the greatest strength and greatest weakness of the American political system is its bureaucracy. There's a reason we have two parties, slowly congealed out of the muck over the centuries. Building national influence is tough but once you have it, it's nearly impossible to kill . Orson Scott Card argued in "Songbird" that the greatest contribution the Roman Empire made to the world was the bureaucracy - because no matter how many places you attack it, its sheer redundancy keeps it stable. An Independent presidential candidate has to do more than win the popular vote. He has to win the popular vote in enough different cities, in enough different counties, in enough different states to win the Electoral College. Remember - Al Gore won 2000 by 2 million votes.
But, according to the official story, he lost Florida by 543.
The Steinbeck quote is questionably apocryphal. I'm fond of it, but there's a question as to whether or not he ever actually said it. Perhaps this Claire Wolfe quote, from 1995, is more apropos:
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."