Liberals to Obama: Go after Wall Street harder

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

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.

Romney says his decades of experience in the business world make him qualified to turn around the economy.

Obama, in turn, contends that he needs more time to continue promoting economic growth.

Karen Joseph closed her eyes and paused for 20 seconds when asked to describe Obama’s economic pitch.

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know,” said Joseph, a homemaker and Obama supporter from Youngstown, Ohio. “That we have a right to a middle class?”

An Obama spokesman declined to comment on the liberals’ assertion that Obama has largely given Wall Street a free pass.