Thoughts by one who supported Nader in 2000, supported Obama since Iowa, and is a supporter of the 99 percent movement (me) 
(or circle firing-squad time)

Henwood:

No doubt you’ve all heard and read about the huge and wonderful Occupy Wall Street satellite rally in Times Square this afternoon.

This crowd was anything but the shiftless hippies of Ann Coulter’s imagining. I bet a lot of them were Democrats, which means that the process of productive disillusionment I’d hoped for in the summer of 2008 is finally kicking into gear, after a long delay:

I could have told you by looking at the polls that Democrats are not happy with Obama. The economy is horrible.

Why is it so awful? Well there was the Reagan revolution. Thirty years of anti-government propaganda arguing that deregulation and privatization are the route to prosperity have raised inequality, spawned financial panics and slowed growth. The Republican party has become the party of tax cuts uber alles. As Cheney said, deficits don't matter.

Clinton merely reinforced that message with words ("era of big government is over") and actions (his dismantling of Glass-Steagall and his ending of welfare as we knew it.) (Clinton reinforced big government with regards to the police state and the war on drugs.) Obama's primary victory over Hillary was in part a repudiation of Clintonism. In a campaign interview with David Leonhardt, Obama argued that workers' wages haven't risen alongside productivity gains over the last 30 years and we need government to even things out. That's big government liberalism. (My disagreement with the Reagan revolution and Clinton's reinforcement of it is why I supported Nader in 2000. In hindsight, given what happened because of 9-11 and the Bush tax cuts, it was a mistake.)

Obama got the biggest stimulus he could get out of Congress in 2009, probably the biggest stimulus ever. He brought government regulation into the bloated, dysfunctional health care system, getting the most he could out of Congress, pushing the ball down the field. The Dodd-Frank Act falls short too, but moves the ball in the right direction. Again Obama probably got the most he could out of Congress.

Since I played football I recognize how important it is to move ball down the field and get the first down. You need first downs to get a touch down. Hail mary's rarely work hence the name "Hail Mary" a prayer. One can't depend on prayers. My idea of what a touchdown would mean is probably aligned with Henwood. I just don't see OWS as mostly a repudiation of Obamamania. It is in a way but Henwood for some reason just wants to bait good people like Barabara Ehreinreich and Christopher Hayes for indulging in a hope that things could change for the better and for putting a positive spin on Obama's election.

In the 2008 Democratic primary, people wanted something new. That's why Hillary lost. (Plus Obama ran a better campaign.) His message to Hillary supporters after the election was that "we're on the same team" and he brought her into the cabinet as Secretary of State, a prestigious position.  Obama's message to independents in the general was I don't care about the blue versus red cable news culture wars, I will do things that work and move the country in the right direction.

The problem is he didn't. (Well he did but not enough.) The Republicans have been unusually obstructionist but Obama had many unforced errors. As the Fed's iPad App will tell you, Obama left two seats open on the Federal Open Market Committee. Bernanke has gone above and beyond to such an extent that the Fed has drawn the glare of the great Sauron's Eye of conservative Republicans. The victorious House Republicans put Fed Abolitionist Ron Paul in charge of the committee overseeing the Federal Reserve. Viable Presidential candidate Rick Perry called Bernanke's accommodating monetary policy treasonous. Bachmann railed at the Fed for printing money. Republican leaders of Congress mailed Bernanke a threatening letter warning him not to try to help the economy recover. And so on. Still the Fed has not done enough. Their forecasts have been reliably over-optimistic. Opportunistic disinflation continues apace.

Right now the votes on the FOMC have been 7-3. Maybe 9-3 vote splits wouldn't make that much of a difference but two more rational voice echoing what Charles Evans has been saying about having their hair on fire over the jobs recession could make a difference. Narayana Kocherlakota recently gave a speech where he described the process of a regular Fed meeting:

At a typical meeting, there are two so-called go-rounds, in which every president and every governor has the opportunity to speak without interruption. The first of these is referred to as the economics go-round. It is kicked off by a presentation on current economic conditions by Federal Reserve staff economists. Then, the presidents and governors describe their individual views on current economic conditions and their respective outlooks for future economic conditions. The presidents typically start by providing information about their district’s local economic performance. We get that information from our research staffs, but also from our interactions with business and community leaders in industries and towns from across our districts.

The chairman speaks at the end of the first go-round. He briefly but thoroughly summarizes the preceding 16 perspectives. I can assure you that this is no easy task—and the chairman’s balanced and thoughtful treatment of our remarks is one of the many reasons that he commands such respect among his colleagues. He then provides his own views on the economy.

The Committee next turns to the second go-round, which focuses on policy. Again, the staff begins, with a presentation of policy options. After that, each of the 17 meeting participants has a chance to speak on what each views as the appropriate policy choice. This set of remarks is followed with a summary by the chairman, in which he lays out what he sees as the Committee’s consensus view for future policy. The voting members of the FOMC then cast their votes on this policy statement and thereby set monetary policy for the next six to seven weeks.

Two additional voices of reason could make a difference.

Green Shoots
Another big failure was that Obama smoked some Hawaiian green shoots. As early as 2009-2010 he turned to deficit-reduction. Instead of taking out insurance in case the recovery was "L" shaped instead of "V" shaped, Obama turned to happy talk and mistaken analogies about how the government needs to tighten its belt just as families do. And so the economy still sucks and people have become motivated to protest Wall Street's complicity in this state of affairs. Yes the American Jobs Act would help, and I'm not surprised as an Obama supporter that Obama proposed it, but the Senate is blocking it. They might get the payroll tax cuts through, that's something but it may not be enough to help Obama get re-elected and certainly not enough to bring down the unemployment rate much.

As an Obama supporter I was very disappointed the way Obama got rolled during the debt-ceiling clown show. The Republican establishment wanted to take Obama's regressive deal even it meant raising taxes. They saw it for what it was. The Tea Party stopped it. (Maybe it was partly a re-election ploy by the White House to demonstrate to independents how looney the Republican Party has become. Even if that's true, the spectacle demoralized Democrats.)

As an Obama supporter I'm deeply worried about another possible scenario being true. The Obama administration cares about re-election uber alles. So much so that it's plausible to me that the Obama administration brought Romneycare to the Federal level in part to alienate their likely opponent in the re-election contest from his conservative base. Early on, Obama said he wanted to win re-election because he said he didn't want to have spent all that time and energy fixing the economy only to hand it over to Romney so he could take credit.

According to this graph Obama won the electoral college and the Presidency by winning states where voters have high levels of eduction, such as purple states like Virginia and North Carolina. They will be focusing more on these states than redish swing states like Ohio in order to win. The unemployment rate of people with a four-year degree is only 4.3 percent. Maybe this is why they didn't take out any insurance against a "L"-shaped recovery even though the last two recoveries were L-shaped with weak job growth and as Reinhart-Rogoff showed in their book "This Time It's Different" recoveries usually take longer after a financial crisis. They thought the stimulus would cushion the blow and that the private sector would pick up the growth baton and the economy would reach escape velocity. Maybe they thought the Fed would do more but according to Ron Suskind's book they didn't give the Federal Reserve much thought except to mistakenly believe their continually overly-optimistic forecasts. Suskind's portrayal certainly rings true given that there are two vacant seats on the FOMC. What would people say if Obama was leaving two seats open on the U.S. Supreme Court?

If Obama does win in 2012 - and the Republicans certainly are not enchanted with Romney: first Bachmann, now Perry, now Cain - I will grind my teeth constantly over glib news analyses about how the unemployment rate doesn't matter. I remember Yglesias linking to an obnoxious blog post by a poli-sci professor arguing this very exact thing. If Obama isn't re-elected maybe the next Democrat elected in the midst of the next lesser depression would create a 21st century WPA modeled on the National Science Foundation and how it goes about doling out grants. This would provide much bang for the buck in stimulus and certainly help said Democrat get re-elected. (That is if the Senate didn't block its creation.) If Obama isn't re-elected though, the Republicans may severely traumatize the country. It's possible. Although the talk is now that the Senate and House will flip parties.

You would think Henwood would recognize the fact that the 99 percent movement would want to appeal to Obama supporters - when asked, Obama himself said the protesters were legitimately frustrated with a  financial system that is responsible for the mess we're in. They're protesting on Wall Street not in front of the White House.

Does Henwood believe Elizabeth Warren's candidacy for the US Senate has some potential for "productive disillusionment"? According to Ron Suskind's book Confidence Men, Obama was impressed with her early on. The Consumer Finance Protection Agency - created by Frank-Dodd - could be good if the Republicans don't gut it.