"Populism has gone mainstream"
Populism has gone mainstream, however, and to a degree unseen in more than a half century. Last year, Gallup did find that a slim majority of the public still believes there is “plenty of opportunity” for “anyone who works hard” to succeed, but that was the lowest level of belief found since the question was first asked in 1952. By comparison, 43 percent agreed, “the average person doesn’t have much chance” (in 1998, less than a fifth said that; in 1952, less than a tenth). In fact, Warren’s hallmark line, that the “game is rigged,” has become rather un-radical. Six in ten Americans believe that the “economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.” This week, the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll reported that three in four Americans “do not feel confident” that their children’s generation will have a better life than them. It was a record high since the question was first asked a quarter century ago. A recent Marist survey found that a majority of Americans still believe the nation is in a recession.
And they have their reasons. Economists’ declared the recession over in 2009. Emmanuel Saez, of the University of California, Berkeley, helps explain what’s happened since. In a paper published in 2013, he found that inflation-adjusted income per family rose 6 percent between 2009 and 2012. But where did that income go? The earnings of the top one percent amounted to 95 percent of the total gain. The incomes for the bottom 99 percent amounted to 0.4 percent of the total rise in income. The examples of remarkable economic growth over that period raise similar issues. Most glaringly, WhatsApp was founded in 2009 and sold for $19 billion this year. It also created only 55 jobs. This is why most Americans view a recovery with scant wage growth as economic stagnancy. The key question of these times is not whether there is economic growth, but whose growth?
That question provides a window into why the attraction to Warren is about her, but also larger than her. By the modern standards of this hyper-capitalist nation, America is teeming with populist movements. On the political right, amid tea party activists and libertarian insurgents, old-time cultural populism has been energized by the cause against cronyism. That energy is dispersed between the new icons of the Grand Old Party. Names like Paul and Cruz hold even with a Bush in presidential polls. On the left, however muffled beneath the Obama presidency and the Clinton consensus, there is a populist energy in search of its champion....
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/web_exclusive/could_elizabeth_warren_threate051548.php?page=all
= new reply since forum marked as read
cuz you are thinking big my friend!!
But, you knew that. 
had an incalculable impact.
Before OWS: "So, specifically how will we be cutting entitlements and by exactly how much (to start)?"
The January 2009 promise by Obama to cut entitlements;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR2009011504114.html
The 2010 naming by Obama of the Cat Food Commission, aka the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, headed by the notorious Simpson (R) and manned, in part, by Paul Ryan, bringing him to national prominence (watch out for the word "reform"
, even before final passage of the ACA;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_Responsibility_and_Reform
The whispered offer in May 2011 from a hot miked Clinton (Bubba) to Ryan to help persuade Democrats to "reform" Medicare;
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/05/bill-clinton-to-paul-ryan-on-medicare-election-give-me-a-call/
Conyers calling out Obama in July 2011 for putting Social Security and Medicare on the table, even though Boehner and Cantor had not asked Obama for them.
http://www.crewof42.com/news/conyers-on-jobs-weve-had-it-lays-out-obama-calls-for-protest-at-white-house/
Sperling, a member of the Obama White House comes up with the idea of a budget sequester, though he denies having done so (after being caught he gives as his reason for the denial that the Republicans modified his idea, rather than accepting it exactly as he suggested it. (No, really, that was his excuse.) Gee, who could ever possibly foresee that Republicans would not accept a budget measure from the Obama White House exactly as it was, with no modification whatever? 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_sequestration_in_2013
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/exclusive-the-woodward-sperling-emails-revealed-88226.html
Naming by Obama in August 2011 of the possibly (probably?) unconstitutional Super Committee, aka "the Grand Bargain Committee," aka the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction
http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/11/news/economy/debt_committee_members/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011
BUT THEN,
People like Hedges plan and begin publicizing an "occupation" of Washington D.C., to begin on October 6, 2011, which has its own website, but Occupy Wall Street starts sooner, in September 2011; and Hedges, Seeger and many others appear in NYC instead.
Politicians, including Obama, go full into 2016 re-election mode and they don't campaign on cutting entitlements. However, the WH comes up with the concept of a sequester, which gets triggered in 2013--after the 2012 re-election of Obama.
Changing a national conversation so quickly after all the events and momentum only hinted at in this post on almost zero dollars is a phenom the guys and gals in ad agencies would love to know how to duplicate.
OWS does not get a fraction of the credit it deserves and I wholly distrust every Dem who pooh poohs it, or worse.