Occupy Wall Street Seems to be Drawing Fire Away from the Prez

I've been pondering Occupy Wall Street this morning, post 2011 elections.

Yesterday we say

• The first Michigan State level representative recalled in 28 years
• Folks in Mississippi reject a "life starts at conception" law
• The architect of the extreme Arizona immigrant crackdown recalled
• Ohio's union busting law overturned by public demand

Overall, great news. Somehow it seems the tide is turning. Some of that tide shift is definitely due to Occupy Wall Street highlighting the problems of America's wealth disparity and corporate corruption.

Where main stream media outlets once shied away from wealth disparity talk, they are now venturing into that territory. Where media outlets once shied away from talk of bank and mortgage fraud, they are now venturing into that territory -- my father, for example, was contacted by Bloomberg News who wanted to interview him about his experiences as a lawyer helping people through bank fraud.

OWS has signaled that talking about wealth disparity and the trouble in the middle class isn't just acceptable...but that it's on the minds of millions of Americans.

I'm starting to think OWS has had one more side effect on American political discourse: It's redirected the attention of the conservative noise machine to Occupy Wall Street instead of at Barack Obama. As much of a juggernaut as the conservative noise machine is, it's designed to pound on one idea at a time. Over and over, repeating and repeating. Though it's never seemed to me to be terribly good at walking and chewing gum at the same time, not great at pounding out more than one message at a time.

Now with OWS to draw the fire, the endless stream of fabricated conservative nonsense against Obama seems largely to have taken a back seat. He's able to spread the message that the Conservatives have been deliberately sabotaging our economy for short term political gain...and it's an idea gaining traction, with 50% of Floridians believing Conservatives are selling America out this way.

Plus it certainly helps everybody involved that Obama is now starting to pick up the populist message OWS has been laying down.