Apparently the calls to murder police officers isn’t enough to scare Obama away.
(Politico) — In the early days of Occupy Wall Street, the simple if loosely-defined notions that propelled the action made it safe and relatively easy for political leaders, including President Obama, to express some solidarity.
But now it’s getting complicated.
Occupy Wall Street is costing cities millions in security and cleanup. The movement still has public support, but violent clashes in spots like Oakland and prolonged urban camp outs in cities including Washington create a potentially awkward scenario for some who were quick to embrace it.
“Look, people are frustrated,” President Obama said earlier this week of the protests on “The Tonight Show.”
“What this signals is that people in leadership, whether it’s corporate leadership, leaders in the banks, leaders in Washington, everybody needs to understand that the American people feel like nobody is looking out for them right now,” Obama said.
Earlier, ahead of his most recent bus tour of North Carolina and Virginia in support of the American Jobs Act, the White House touted the movement’s “99 percent” slogan, as part of a larger message about the economy and joblessness.
On Friday, White House press secretary Jay Carney did not distance the White House from the movement, but was careful to define Obama’s support as within certain parameters.
“The president has said that he understands peoples’ frustration, he understands that those frustrations are are felt very broadly by the American people — at least those frustrations that have to do with the fact that the economy isn’t strong enough, the fact that unemployment is too high and the fact that Washington is dysfunctional,” Carney said.
Carney declined to address an emerging issue with mayors who are increasingly frustrated with the costs, hassle and problems associated with the demonstrations, saying, “I am not going to get into assessments of individual cities and how they are responding and what their cost burden is.”
