Marquette College Democrats Drink the Kool-Aid: Supporting “Occupy Wall Street” Event

From an e-mail to members of the College Democrats:

From: Heffernan, Erin
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 5:13 PM
To: LS-CollegeDemocrats
Subject: Occupy Wall Street event

Hey MU College dems!

Several things are going on this week you all should know about:

1. The occupy Wall Street movement is growing and Occupy Milwaukee is having their first protest this Saturday.

The Occupy Milwaukee’ movement has been endorsed by figures like Russ Feingold, Rob Zerban, the New York Times, and Nancy Pelosi. It is a great movement and we hope many of you can come out for the protest.

Here is a link for more information: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143038022460557

2. We are having an informational table under the bridge this Friday to advertise for the Occupy Wall Street event and to promote general membership. We need people to sit at the table in one hour shifts from 10am until 3pm. If you can make anytime at all during that period, please email us at: marquettedems@gmail.com

3. Once again, our next meeting on October 18th at 7pm we are holding e-board elections. If you are interested in running or voting you must come to the meeting in person. If you would like to run for a position you should also email a paragraph describing why you would like that position and what makes you qualified to us at: marquettedems@gmail.com. These paragraphs will be sent to the club to inform our member’s about each person running.

Here is a link to RSVP for the meeting/elections: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=247051955337218

And if you haven’t already:

Like us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marquette-University-College-Democrats/168055839891684

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/MarquetteDems

Thanks and have a great week!

Erin Heffernan
College of Arts & Sciences, ‘14
Secretary, College Democrats
Marquette University
erin.heffernan@marquette.edu

Historically, this is out of character for the Marquette College Democrats.

The organization has traditionally been dominated by students who were moderate liberals, not given to anti-capitalist rhetoric. And the reason for that has been that the College Democrats have been students with an interest in real-world politics: working on campaigns, interning on Capitol Hill, and so on.

You can be liberal and do that, but you can’t be extreme.

But now they are associating themselves with a bunch of air-headed, supercilious, smug, spoiled and not-very-bright people.

To the extent that the movement has a coherent message, it’s socialist.

But mostly it’s whining about the trials of privileged kids who can skip class, and who got to go to an expensive college because daddy worked for one of those corporations they are demonizing.

They feel put-upon because their Women’s Studies major doesn’t get them a good paying job. And they think it’s unfair that they have to repay student loans.

Thus it seems the Marquette College Democrats have lurched to the left.

[Update]

Rick Esenberg nailed the issue of the protests in a recent blog post:

The occupation protests are straight up demagoguery. The protesters are either incoherent (rants about “corporations,” “we are the 99%”) or call for incredibly stupid and destructive things (guaranteed “living” incomes or debt forgiveness.)

The protests are less about a program than they are about a psychology. They are fueled by the frisson of opposition and manned by the usual suspects. To be sure, there is real economic uncertainty. If you borrowed $100,000 for a degree in Comparative Literature, the prospect of paying it back with your earnings at Noodles is frightening. Unemployment is scary. Underemployment is frustrating and there is too much of both.

But the protesters have no solution. The “movement” largely reduces to a claim that other people have something that I want and should be made to give it to me. It’s easy to rail about a few people who are very wealthy but the notion that the nation’s economic problems can be solved by taking their stuff away doesn’t bear the slightest scrutiny. You can’t balance the budget that way. You can’t solve sluggish economic demand. Maybe the world would be a better place if Steve Jobs and Bill Gates couldn’t become filthy rich by revolutionizing the way we live and work, but I don’t think so.

There is a reasonable critique of government bailouts and the overheated financial industry but it’s a complicated one that can’t be reduced to narratives about greed (although greed is certainly part of the story) or unfettered capitalism.

I think that the occupation protests will wither away but expect continued emphasis on the class warfare theme by the Democrats and their allies. Without an unexpected economic turnabout, the President can’t run for re-election based on his record. He needs a scapegoat - someone to blame and somebody to fear.