Marching Shoes, Part 2

The Occupy Wall Street protests over the weekend are opening some media eyes.  Michael Sherer at TIME evaluates the potential for a "Tea Party for the Left."  E.J. Dionne does the same in the Washington Post, although he broadens it out to the Washington conference: "This week, progressives will highlight a new effort to pursue the road not taken at a conference convened by the Campaign for America’s Future that opens Monday. It is a cooperative venture with a large number of other organizations, notably the American Dream Movement led by Van Jones..."
Dionne notes this: "A quiet left has also been very bad for political moderates. The entire political agenda has shifted far to the right because the Tea Party and extremely conservative ideas have earned so much attention. The political center doesn’t stand a chance unless there is a fair fight between the right and the left."

I've pretty much said all of this on my previous post, but two more things: first, I just heard someone on TV from the Occupy Wall Street demos who used the word "revolutionaries" which I haven't heard in more than 30 years in this kind of context.  These are not single-issue protests, but a coalition of outrage. Michael Moore said, "They're here to reclaim their future.  Their future has been stolen." 

 Also, candidate Obama's hope clearly was that his election campaign was building a mass movement that would hold together after his election, and help propel change.  You can argue why that mostly didn't happen---that the Obama White House had more than enough to fill its day with governing, that nobody knows how this could work since it has never happened, etc.  Now even though the President himself called for the marching shoes, he's going to have to deal with the excesses--including the excessive expectations--of a movement outside his or anyone's control.