Obama took control over the issue of the economy today in his speech in Colorado. It was an amazing speech and had the crowd totally in his hands. I hope there will be a video available soon.
Some of the key points:
- Obama rightly blamed, not just the Bush administration, but the entire Republican party and their laissez faire economic ideology for the mess that we're in right now. Specifically, he put the blame on the "voodoo economics" first espoused by Ronald Reagan, the bankrupt notion of trickle down economics. Which essentially amounts to giving to the rich and telling the middle class and working class, "you're on your own." He argued that he is for the free market, but that he is not for giving free license to special interests to take as much they want (paraphrasing here).
More below.
The speech both critiqued McCain and his party's economic philosophy, and also laid out Obama's economic philosophy and his explanation for the current financial situation.
- He pounced on McCain's "fundamentals of the economy are strong" gaffe, and tore his excuse to shreds. He noted that McCain has said this at least SIXTEEN times throughout the primary and general campaigns.
- He brought up Phil Gramm, and named him as one of the key masterminds of the deregulation mess that gave free reign to banks and investors to engage in unbridled speculation. Obama said there's no way McCain is going to fix anything if he's listening to the same people who got us in the mess in the first place. And of course, he mentioned how Phil Gramm wrote McCain's economic platform and called the American people a nation of whiners. '
- He tied the Iraq War to the economic mess. And he got the crowd up on its feet when he did so. He said there's no way we can trust McCain to get us out of this economic mess when he doesn't believe in regulation and when he wants to continue America's deficit spending by continuing a trillion dollar war in Iraq. I have never heard a critique of the war tied so forcefully to the economic problems the US is now facing.
- Began to lay out a vision for a new economic philosophy. One based on a notion of "shared prosperity," a philosophy which states the strength of the economy depends on everyone prospering, not just the wealthy (or the middle class, in McCain's view). This is brilliant, because it makes equality and economic prosperity go hand in hand, as opposed to being in opposition to one another.
- Talked specifics. He talked about the various calls he has made for reform of the mortgage industry over the past two years. He contrasted his record against McCain's, who has called for what Obama called the oldest trick in the Washington playbook - calling for a "commission" to study the problem. Obama then said this is not 9/11, we know what the problem is, and we can go about fixing it, we don't need a commission to study it.
- Laid out notion of dynamic regulation of the economy, making him sound like he's on top of all the changes going on in the economy over the past few decades. He critiques notions of fixed regulation, arguing that we can't have a 21st century economy regulated by 20th century regulations. So, even though he clearly is for more regulation, he brilliantly points out that he understands any new regulation must take into account the dramatic transformation the global, networked economy has undergone in the past few decades.
Unfortunately, MSNBC cut away from the speech before Obama started to get to specifics of his proposals to fix the problem.
But, bottom line, I was blown away by the speech. I kept thinking as I heard him talk, this is the man I want in the White House as this nation takes on some very difficult challenges in the upcoming years. And the audience there was with him. They knew that he understood the situation, understood their pain, and what's more, they knew he understood the causes of the problem and the way to go about fixing it.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden for President and Vice President of the United States!
UPDATE: here's a link to the text of Obama's speech. I will post a link to the video when it becomes available.
Muzikal's diary with text of Obama's Colorado speech