Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., rebuked the Occupy Wall Streeters for not voting in 2010 and gave the movement a lesson in political activity during an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show last night.
“I’m a little bit unhappy when people who didn’t vote last time blame me for the consequences of their not voting,” Frank said. “I understand some of the people at Occupy Wall Street are kind of critical of [voting]. They think that’s conventional politics,” He referred such people to the example of the National Rifle Association. “[The NRA is] the most successful organization in America in getting its views adopted,” Frank observed, because “they very effectively identify who the Members of the Congress are and [of] the legislatures and vote for them.”
Maddow brought Frank onto the show after saying that Americans “across the political spectrum realize that they have been victimized by an economic system and a political system that tilts so disproportionately toward the one percent’s interests.” She added that “Democrats are trying to turn the upcoming elections in the direction of that sentiment.”
To her credit, Maddow acknowledged before Frank’s appearance the incongruity of Democratic attacks on Wall Street and corporations. “With all the Wall Street contributions they’ve got,” Maddow asked, “with all the revolving door lobbyist and staff connections they’ve got to Wall street — what can Democrats do to align themselves with the message of the ‘we are the 99 percent’ movement?” (Many Republicans have a similarly cozy relationship with lobbyists.)
Maddow let Frank lecture the Occupy Wall Streeters without forcing him to defend his own connections, of the very sort that Maddow had just criticized. For instance, Frank held a Wall Street fundraiser ahead of the Dodd-Frank legislation.
Speaking of the Dodd-Frank bill, Maddow earier had highlighted an Occupy Wall Street sign that read, humorously, “I bailed out a bank and all I got was a new debit card charge.” That debit card fee did not result from the bank bailouts, but from a provision that retailers such as Wal-Mart successfully lobbied Democrats to include in Dodd-Frank.
Maddow did not press Frank on his support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage companies that triggered the housing crisis, nor did she ask if his romantic relationship with an executive at Fannie Mae influenced the way Frank conducted his congressional oversight of the companies. Frank, who famously said in 2003 that “the two government-sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis.”
