(I began writing this yesterday, but work issues cause me to delay it - sorry)
Obama: It's not class warfare, it's Math!
Well, it's happened at last. Obama has stopped negotiating with himself by putting forth half-measures designed to garner Republican support and votes. This time he's offered a deficit plan to help pay for his Jobs Bill that goes right to the heart of the problem.
The Loss of Revenues.
Link to Video
Full Text
In remarks in the White House Rose Garden, Obama drew stark contrasts between Republican's penchant for backing "tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires" while requiring seniors, the middle class and the poor to tighten their belts and accept sacrifices.
"During this past decade, profligate spending in Washington, tax cuts into multi-millionaires and billionaires, and two wars have turned a record surplus into a massive deficit," Obama said. "If we don't act, the debt will eventually crowd out everything else, eventually affecting us from investing in things like education and Medicaid. We need to cut what we can't afford to pay for things we need."
Now of course we all know that Republicans HATE these ideas (even he ones that are their own ideas) and aren't likely even with overwhelming public support in Obama's favor to pass most of this bill. We all know it's D.O.A. in either house of Congress.
So is this just an empty Don Quixote gesture that is designed to fail, yet fire up the base and either get Obama Re-elected or better yet - Restore the House to the Democrats?
Will that work, and can America afford to keep limping along with 9% Unemployment for another year until it finally does?
There are a lot of reasons why Obama took so long to go down this road. This is a huge enormous gamble. It could fail. It could backfire.
And worse, it might not succeed at repairing the damage that his 2 1/2 years of pre-negotiations hath wrought.
Maddow: Did you feel better about Obama's tone today?
Moore: I felt instantly better.
What happened today is exactly what we've been wanting President Obama to do, and he has to do more of it. Move On is not his problem. The people that voted for him in '08, will vote for him in '12, but they won't bring ten other people to the polls with them. They won't be excited. Just to have him repeat over and over gain that "I will refuse to let the Bush Tax Cuts continue - I will refuse to rebuild this country on the backs of the poor and the middle class" - is music to my ears. We should have heard this from day one. I'll take it on Day 900.
Well that's a good thing, but I'm not expecting to see this convince people like Cenk (who just joined Current TV) or Hamsher. Some people just can't stop themselves from constantly complaining.
Hopefully, I'm wrong about that.
But again, Will Congress Cave or will we have to suffer with permanent gridlock and inaction for the next 14 months? Can we really afford that?
I'm happy to see this new Obama, but I admit - I'm really concerned that this is a very expensive and risky strategy. A lot of people are getting exactly what they've been screaming for, just as I predicted it they would, but at what cost?
Will it work? That's something I not willing to bet on.
Not yet. But I still, even at this late date, have Hope.
Vyan
9:01 AM PT: The Polls Seems to Indicate his Pivot is popular not just with the Left:
The jobs plan the President has touted is on solid ground in the polls: Gallup showed that a 45 percent plurality of Americans support it, as did a 43 percent plurality in a recent CNN/ORC survey. Within that jobs plan there are popular individual proposals -- a CBS/New York Times poll on Friday showed majorities supported all the components tested. It has the feeling of a brick-by-brick strategy: the President can build his standing on the economy by singling out issues that are popular on their own.
But is that enough to sway the Right to Cave or inspired the Left or Middle to Excitement in 2012? We'll just have to see, won't we..