Let the ‘turfing begin!

The coalition — which includes unions like SEIU and CWA and groups like the Center for Community Change — is currently working on a plan to bus thousands of protesters from across the country to Washington, where they will congregate around the Capitol from December 5-9, SEIU president Mary Kay Henry tells me in an interview…

One idea under consideration — pending various permitting and other logistical issues — is to have a series of tents set up on the lawn outside the Capitol, each representing a state, with the number of unemployed in each state prominently displayed. But the optics are still being worked out.

One goal of the protests, Henry says, is to pressure Republicans to support Obama’s jobs creation proposals. More generally, the aim is to highlight Congress’s misguided obsession with the deficit and overall inaction on unemployment…

“The reason we’re targeting Republicans is because this is about jobs,” she said. “The Republicans’ insistence that no revenue can be put on the table is the reason we’re not creating jobs in this country. We want to draw a stark contrast between a party that wants to scapegoat immigrants, attack public workers, and protect the rich, versus a president who has been saying he wants America to get back to work and that everybody should pay their fair share.”

Simple problem, simple solution. Democrats want to create the perception of a popular revolt against GOP obstructionism — which, coincidentally, feeds directly into Obama’s re-election strategy of running against Congress — but they can’t rely on the “Occupy” movement to do that for them organically. The occupiers seem to care more about banks and redistribution than partisan wrangling and job creation; even if they did care, there might not be enough of them to create a truly impressive show of strength outside the Capitol; and even if they had the numbers, the accompanying tent city would produce the same crime and cretinism that’s already soured the public on the movement. Imagine the fallout if someone got raped at a camp organized explicitly to shill for Obama and his agenda. The Democrats need a way to coopt the populist “Occupy” brand while stripping the protests of actual occupiers to whatever extent they can. That’s where their union cronies come in: They do care about jobs and shilling for The One, they can deliver the crowd needed to dazzle the media, and presumably they’ll be able to weed out some of the rape-ier elements so that the “occupation” stays reasonably orderly. If it comes off as planned, it may have the added benefit to the left of rehabilitating OWS’s image in time for the general election campaign next year. There’s nothing more all-American these days than hatin’ on Congress, so the “Occupy” brand should get a bounce simply for its choice of targets. Democrats need that to happen in time for the inevitable round of new protests in the spring, which they’re counting on to give the media a pretext to keep pushing Obama’s tax platform.

Via Breitbart TV, here’s a nice example of the cretinism I mentioned. Question: Should tea partiers try to get in on the action next month? It’d be a shame to let all those cameras get hogged by the left, especially since we’re on the brink of the Super Committee failing miserably to agree on deficit reduction. The tea party could use a little anti-Congress image-polishing too, and judging from stories like this, their semi-friendly chats with occupiers could produce some useful points of agreement. An end to federal bailouts is within reach! Just bring mace and maybe a taser if you go.