The President is in Cleveland

Dear Friends,

The President fulfilled his promise today to fight every day to turn the economy around.  He gave a speech in Cleveland this afternoon that was another campaign style speech.  In substance it was a well thought out and concise argument for why people should vote for Democrats this year instead of Republicans personified by Representative Boehner.  When I read it, it seemed to lack the enthusiasm and intensity of his labor day speech in Milwaukee and when I watched a video it seemed quite flat.  However, if any undecided voters listened with an open mind, they would have been persuaded to keep the Republicans out of power for as long as possible. 

President Obama seemed to quash any rumors that his administration would agree to some extension of all the Bush tax breaks as a compromise.  I hope he meant that.  He will need to be more forceful to be sure that the public knows that it is the Republicans that are blocking the continuation of the tax cuts for those with incomes under $250,000 because the tax cuts for the top 2% of earners are not being extended.  President Obama had a great paragraph about this subject:

With all the other budgetary pressures we have -– with all the Republicans’ talk about wanting to shrink the deficit -- they would have us borrow $700 billion over the next 10 years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 each to folks who are already millionaires.  And keep in mind wealthy Americans are just about the only folks who saw their incomes rise when Republicans were in charge.  And these are the folks who are less likely to spend the money -- which is why economists don’t think tax breaks for the wealthy would do much to boost the economy.

The President finished with what I suspect will be his theme - a great project of American renewal:

We are here today because in the worst of times, the people who came before us brought out the best in America.  Because our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents were willing to work and sacrifice for us.  They were willing to take great risks, and face great hardship, and reach for a future that would give us the chance at a better life.  They knew that this country is greater than the sum of its parts -– that America is not about the ambitions of any one individual, but the aspirations of an entire people, an entire nation.

That’s who we are.  That is our legacy.  And I’m convinced that if we’re willing to summon those values today, and if we’re willing to choose hope over fear, and choose the future over the past, and come together once more around the great project of national renewal, then we will restore our economy and rebuild our middle class and reclaim the American Dream for the next generation.

Unfortunately, I am still not convinced that the President understands that he needs to make these speeches on a sustained basis for the next two months.  On Thursday, the President is having meetings with his staff in the White House all day, and there is no public schedule for through the weekend.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal