Populism is Obama's path to victory

Critics berate the president for taking his inspiring new progressive message to the American people. But it's the critics who ought to be ashamed

The president must be doing something right. He's now getting advice (from all the wrong quarters) that he ought to stop standing up for the people, not the privileged. Of course, such arguments largely rest on pre-cast assumptions and self-serving calculations.

First out of the triangulating box was Clinton pollster Mark Penn, who wrote a remarkably data-free piece urging the president to draw back from dividing lines and retreat to formulaic centrism. In effect, Penn recommended a replay of the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign — when, in a pre-Monica time of rising prosperity and job growth, the incumbent still couldn't manage 50 percent of the popular vote, and was left without a serious mandate for his second term. It was this same approach, cautious and at times almost contentless, that doomed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Voters were instead drawn to the cause and candidate of change. (She could have been that candidate, but it was too late when she finally embraced the populism Penn had disdained in the early contests.)

Fight on, Mr. President. You're renewing your voice and your vision, and America is beginning to hear you again as it did in 2008.

Now come the real Republicans to second and amplify Penn's message to Obama.

In a speech at the Heritage Foundation, the Medicare-shredding Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) denounced the president's "divisive message that pits one group against another" with "fear, envy, and the politics of division." Predictably, Ryan railed against "class warfare" — the tired phrase ritually trotted out from the right wing's Orwellian dictionary to smear any call for economic justice and tax fairness.

Ryan knows a thing or two about class warfare. His proposed budget, supported by almost every Republican in the House, would wage war against the poor, against the education and health care of the middle class, and against the security of seniors, with Medicare voucherized and recipients forced to pay an additional $6,000 a year. The wealthy, and this is no surprise, would benefit from huge tax cuts paid for by the sacrifices of everyone else. No wonder Ryan doesn't want the president to confront this by campaigning for ideals of equity and the interests of hard-working and out-of-work Americans.

No matter who emerges from the substandard ranks of GOP presidential candidates — the choice ranges narrowly from the inauthentic to the incredible — is Obama supposed to forswear telling the truth on tax plans that would cosset the comfortable and slam the vast majority, even as budget cuts shred everything from college aid to workplace safety? To Republicans, drawing the contrast is class warfare. Thus they revile Occupy Wall Street — because they're eager to roll back financial regulation and reopen the casino of unbridled Wall Street speculation.

The president increasingly seems to understand that the differences here must be stated and debated and resolved — that here is a fundamental dividing line in our politics and 2012 is the time for Americans to decide.