Can the ballot box be Occupied?

Democrats hope the burgeoning anti-bank protest movement's anger will help the Left in 2012 — though it could wind up hurting liberals more

In some ways, the Occupy movement resembles the Tea Party. Both have harnessed anger over the crony capitalism that pervades Washington and Wall Street, where lobbyists buy influence with politicians and cut deals that favor themselves and hobble their competition. Both protest movements object to the big bailouts engineered by a Democratic Congress and the Bush administration, and then continued under the Obama administration for banks and American automakers. And both movements are at their heart iconoclastic, trying to replace the Establishment with something more responsive to the will of the people.

Democrats ignored and often belittled the Tea Party in 2009 and 2010, and paid a steep price for it in the midterm elections. Could Republicans underestimate the Occupy movement and face the same fate in 2012?

There isn't much doubt that the Occupy movement taps into real resentment on the Left, much like the Tea Party did on the Right. While people tend to think of the Tea Party as a reaction to Barack Obama, they miss the lingering anger over the mess made by the Republican Congress from 2001 to 2006, especially on spending and pork-barrel politics. Conservatives think of that period as a huge opportunity lost to an ill-considered drive to build a so-called "permanent majority" by leveraging lobbyists and spreading government cash to cronies rather than conducting the systemic reform promised by the GOP in the 1994 "revolution." Many of those who sat on their hands in disgust in 2006 while Democrats won back both chambers of Congress marched with their feet to Tea Party rallies in 2009, in large part to ensure that the Republicans who eventually won back Congress were made of sterner and more principled stuff.

The emphasis on Wall Street rather than Washington as the focus of anger and blame puts Occupy into an intellectual paradox that will likely limit its impact.

In that, the Occupy movement has its parallel. The organizers of Occupy are the traditional Democratic base of unions and ideological progressive groups like Alliance for Global Justice, and they feel as disaffected about the current administration as conservatives did from Republicans in 2006. Unions have not won any of their battles on Card Check, and states like Wisconsin and Ohio have gutted the privileges that kept state employees locked into mandatory dues and union-provided benefits at exorbitant prices. They are in retreat across the nation as states look at teetering pension systems and do the math that clearly shows that massive reforms will have to be imposed soon to keep governments from falling into bankruptcy.

Progressives have fewer real gripes, as the Obama administration practically threw away its House majority in 2010 by ignoring its failing economic policies to concentrate on passing a health-care overhaul that relatively few wanted. His administration has indulged mightily in crony capitalism, giving favors to campaign bundlers like George Kaiser and his solar-tech firm Solyndra — favors that cost taxpayers more than $500 million. Liberals resent the fact that Obama hasn't pushed their agenda through Congress, and share the same resentments of the conservative grassroots about financial-sector bailouts.