E. J. Dionne Jr. targets Wall Street, and winds up with the Teabaggers in the crosshairs as well

"If you want to understand why President Obama's standing in the polls is not where it used to be -- and also why the populist-sounding Tea Party movement has gained so much traction -- consider that some significant part of the American voting population has come to see the administration as both too liberal and too tied to Wall Street."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr. in his Washington Post column
today, "Obama needs to cut his Wall Street tag"

by Ken

You can see the Washington Post trying desperately to combat the common perception that it's a "liberal" paper, not least as Fred Hiatt keeps stockpiling more and more right-wing and ultra-right-wing columnists. What are there now, 20 of them? 30? Really, now, wouldn't you figure that with just George Will and Chucky Toyhammer you're generating an entire planet's worth of thuggish, pompous, plug-ignorant imbecility?

You have to figure that the Gathering of the Op-Ed Neanderthals represents an increasingly desperate attempt to "live down" the embarrassment, from the Hiattesque mindset, of continuing to publish E. J. Dionne Jr., Harold Meyerson, and Eugene Robinson. Given the present-day inhospitableness of their surroundings, I'm filled with admiration that they continue to bring as much sense as they do to the Post op-ed wasteland.

Which is a fancy way of dressing up that I just loved Dionne's column today. His basic point is that, possibly just in time, the Obama administration may be taking economic steps -- the expected plan to tax the banksters to recover the cost of the bailouts, and ideas we're hearing for at least a partial pullback from the brilliant scheme to tax the so-called "Cadillac" health plans -- that might enable it to escape from what he considers the double whammy of being perceived in the heartland as "Wall Street liberals." He makes some elegantly wise points among his conclusions, but there's also considerable the pleasure along the way of encountering points we just don't expect to encounter these days in the opinion aisles of the infotainment news media.

About liberalism, for example:

"I personally despise the way the noble liberal idea has been devalued, but face it: Conservatives have had great success in discrediting liberalism, to the point that most liberals dare not call themselves by their own name."

Or about the president's compromised credentials as a Wall Street liberal:

"Never mind that Obama is not really all that liberal (read any of the liberal bloggers if you doubt this) and never mind that Wall Street is fighting Obama on financial reform, particularly on his excellent proposal to create a financial consumer protection agency. The fact is that the Wall Street tag is sticking, and Obama was always going to battle the L-word."

Or, in crediting the president with "finally trying to address what has been an enormous distortion in our political debate" with regard to the whole problem of government deficits, he bristles at --

"the tired notion that the deficits can be cured if we just reduce 'entitlements,' which I put in quotation marks because I'm weary of people using this highfalutin word to dodge saying directly that they want deep cuts in Medicare and Social Security.

"Actually, health-care reform is designed in part to contain the long-term growth of Medicare costs. And the savings that can be wrung out of Social Security are limited. In the end, if you care about fiscal responsibility, you have to favor raising taxes."

"But whose taxes?' he asks. And now he moves into high gear:

The truth is that we've had a large income and wealth shift in the United States, in favor of not just the rich in general but the financial sector in particular. We are overtaxing wage and salary income relative to investment income, and overtaxing the manufacturing and service sectors relative to the financial industry. It's why Warren Buffett has said that he's taxed at a lower rate than his receptionist.

Moving the tax burden toward the financial sector is thus a matter of both justice and political necessity. The best thing that could happen to Obama would be for him to have a fight or two with Wall Street and the big banks on behalf of balancing the budget. It is precisely the way to shake off both ends of the Wall Street Liberal tag.

This also has the benefit of challenging the Tea Party movement to come clean on whether it really is populist, or merely using populist rhetoric to pursue the same old low-tax, low-regulation agenda that got us into this mess.

Will the Tea Party crowd come out against taxes on banks and finance in the name of their libertarian principles? If they do, what kind of populists are they?

After a year in which progressives played defense, it's time to call some bluffs.

And when the dust settles, he's got the Teabaggers in the crosshairs. Now that's nifty columnizing!

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