Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Liberals urge Obama to go after Wall Street harder - Houston Chronicle

Message from liberals to President Barack Obama: Your economic message is muddled, go after Wall Street harder.


With the November election looming, some of the president's most ardent backers are fretting that the incumbent Democrat isn't successfully making the case for a second term at a time of economic turmoil. And they argue that he should sharpen his message by taking a firm stand against the financial sector's excesses.


"If he really took on Wall Street big time, if he told the story of how Wall Street are villains, made them the enemy, we could take them down," Paul Sasso, a 47-year-old liberal from San Diego, said this week. "To me, that could win him the election, I'm sure."


It was a sentiment similarly expressed by more than a dozen other self-described progressive activists attending this week's Take Back the American Dream conference in Washington.


Some said that the rhetoric of the Occupy Wall Street movement had been disappointingly absent from Obama's message. Others implored the president to pressure Republican challenger Mitt Romney to reveal the big-dollar donors who are fueling his campaign by "bundling" contributions from smaller donors. Activists also said they were put off by what they called Obama's lack of exasperation when efforts to regulate Wall Street post-recession fell short of what many had demanded.


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