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For years, Democrats have been accused of poor messaging. This has really changed, in a big way, over the last two months. Even Harry Reid, the guy who gets drowned out by the sound of photosynthesis, has become a
giant in the world of Democratic
messaging. Today, President Obama kept the ball rolling with remarks at the White House. These remarks amplified current Democratic memes laid out on the campaign trail, including recent trips to the swing states of Virginia and Florida. I thought it would be instructive for us to take a closer look at the messaging contained in today's remarks by the President. For a full transcript of the speech,
click here.
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THE SETTING: President Obama is in a suit and tie looking presidential in the White House, the backdrop includes the Presidential Seal and a group of enthusiastic "middle-class" Americans behind him. Compare that to Mitt Romney standing in front of what appears to be a poorly handmade American flag, a few reporters sitting in front of him, a couple of supporters off to the side, with Romney wearing his casual friday open-collar shirt and $700 blue jeans and a black (!) belt:
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THE PRESIDENT: "I am joined here today by moms and dads, husbands and wives, middle-class Americans who work hard every single day to provide for their families. And like most Americans, they work hard and they don’t ask for much. They do expect, however, that their hard work is going to pay off. They want to know that if they put in enough effort, if they are acting responsibly, then they can afford to pay the bills; that they can afford to own a home that they call their own; that they can afford to secure their retirement; and most of all, that they can afford to give their kids greater opportunity -- that their children and grandchildren can achieve things that they didn’t even imagine."
Fairness. The American Dream.
"....We haven’t had to come back from an economic crisis this deep or this painful since the 1930s. But we also knew that if we were persistent, if we kept at it and kept working, that we’d gradually get to where we need to be.
Here’s the thing. We are not going to get there, we’re not going to get to where we need to be if we go back to the policies that helped to create this mess in the first place. And the last thing that we should be doing is asking middle-class families who are still struggling to recover from this recession to pay more in taxes."
Remember the Scale of the Problem. Remember Who Created the Problem.
".... And that’s why it’s so disappointing that, so far at least, House Republicans have refused to follow the Senate’s example and do the same thing. On Wednesday, they voted to hold these middle-class tax cuts hostage unless we also spend a trillion dollars over the next decade on tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. In fact, it’s a little worse than that because their plan would actually raise taxes on 25 million hardworking American families by about $1,000 each."
Remember Who is Obstructing Reform.
"So, at a time when too many working families are already struggling to make ends meet, they want to give millionaires and billionaires and folks like me tax cuts that we don’t need and that the country can’t afford, even if middle-class families have to pick up the tab for it. Those are their priorities.
And this week, we learned that there's some in the Republican Party who don’t want to stop there. An independent, non-partisan study found that one plan at least would give more tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, and they’d pay for those tax cuts by raising taxes on the middle class -- an average tax hike of more than $2,000 for families with children."
You Pay $2k; They Get Tax Cuts.
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(pausing after he said, "an average tax hike of more than $2k for families with children")
"Now, I just think we’ve got our priorities skewed if the notion is that we give tax breaks to folks who don't need them and, to help pay for that, we tax folks who are already struggling to get by. That's not how you grow an economy. You grow an economy from the middle out, and from the bottom up. And the kind of approach that the House Republicans are talking about is bad for our families and it’s bad for our economy.
The people standing behind me should not have to pay more just so the wealthiest Americans can pay less. That’s not just top-down economics, that's upside-down economics. (Laughter.)"
The Attack on Trickle-Down Economics Continues; Middle-Out Economics is Again Mentioned. Humor.
"And keep in mind, we're talking about folks like me going back to the tax rates that existed under Bill Clinton. If you remember, that was when we created 23 million new jobs, we went from deficits to surplus, and folks at the top did well, too -- because when middle-class families have money in their pockets, they go out and buy that new car, or that new appliance, or that new computer for their kids, or they go out to a restaurant, or, heaven forbid, they take a vacation once in a while. And that money goes back into the economy, and businesses do well because they've got more customers."
Clinton versus Bush; Developing the Middle-Out Economics Argument.
"....So, for those of you who are keeping score at home, here’s where we stand. We might have a whole bunch of disagreements with folks in the other party on whether it’s a good idea to spend more money giving tax breaks to millionaires or billionaires. And frankly, that issue is probably not going to be resolved until after November. In the meantime, though, we say we all agree on extending tax cuts for middle-class families. The House says it agrees. The Senate has already shown that it agrees. And I certainly agree. So let’s at least work on what we agree on.
Let’s keep taxes low for 98 percent of Americans, and we can argue about the other 2 percent. Let's keep taxes low for the 97 percent of small business owners, and we can argue about the other 3 percent. If Congress sends me a clean bill extending the tax cuts on the first $250,000 of every family’s income, I will sign it right away. (Applause.) I will sign it right away."
Pressure on Republicans in the House.
"And keep in mind -- just one last point I want to make -- we're saying nobody's income taxes go up on the first $250,000 of their income. So even somebody who makes more than $250,000 is still getting a tax break on their first $250.000. You understand? Even somebody who's worth $200 million -- on that first $250,000 they're still paying lower taxes.
It's the right thing to do. It's the smart thing to do. It would be good for the economy, and most importantly, it would be good for your families.
So we're going to have plenty to argue about in the next three months, and probably in the next five years. (Laughter.) This shouldn’t be one of those things we argue about. (Applause.)"
Did you catch that dig at Mitt Romney? The other message: There is an Adult in the Room.
IN OTHER NEWS!
The July Jobs Report came out, and The Washington Post, in its headline, called it "better-than-expected," noting that: "Employers added 163,000 jobs in July, more than double that of June." This allowed President Obama to continue his argument that there's been 29 straight months of private sector job growth. It also left Mitt Romney with little other than to look like he's cheering for a depression.
In related news, there's a new article from Ruchir Sharma of The Atlantic entitled, "Comeback Nation: Why the U.S. Economy Is Much Stronger Than You Think." In it, Sharma dispells the current vogue of doomsaying about America and the American economy with actual, printable facts, including the following:
"Polls show that a majority of Americans think China is already the world's 'leading' economy, even though it is still about one third the size of the U.S. economy. The reality is that, at 2.5 percent growth, the US remains the fastest-growing rich economy, and is in fact regaining some of the recent ground lost to newcomers like China.
...
This year, the United States will also grow faster than the global average for the first time since 2003, the year an unprecedented boom in emerging market growth began."
I wanted to do some research to see if this type of cynical doomsaying that Sharma disproves has an equivalent in history. I only had to go back to 1952, to the Republican National Convention. There a well-known cynic and doomsayer addressed the convention with
these words:
"At each of those four-year intervals I have pointed out the inch-by-inch destruction of the ramparts of free men in the United States.
...
Within 8 years since victory [in WWII], we will have seen tax-and-tax-spend-and-spend reach a fantastic total greater than in all the previous 170 years of our Republic.
Behind this plush curtain of tax and spend, three sinister spooks or ghosts are mixing poison for the American people. They are the shades of Mussolini, with his bureaucratic fascism; of Karl Marx, and his socialism; and of Lord Keynes, with his perpetual government spending, deficits and inflation. And we added a new ideology of our own. That is government give-away programs.
By way of the bureaucracy part of the mixture, within 20 years we have seen it grow from under 600,000 Federal officials under Republican Administration to over 2,300,000 officials today-with the addition of almost a thousand of government agencies. In fascist fashion, they dictate and give orders and favors to our citizens. Still worse, they do have a real inherent power. Their inherent power is that of all bureaucracy to lay its paralyzing hand more and more heavily upon free men. They rush headlong into its phantasies of the millennium and send the bills to the Treasury."
That speaker at the 1952 Republican National Convention -- the person who sounds like the direct ancestor of Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Any J. Republican with all the cynical doomsaying -- that person was none other than Herbert Hoover. Those disparaging remarks were made at a time the United States was beginning the greatest international economic push since the Roman Empire. Thank God for Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
Also today, the Associated Press is reporting a story entitled, "Romney: I have paid taxes every year." Guffaw! Well, of course, if he bought one candy bar during each calendar year, then I guess that's true. He's got us there! The real message, though, is this: Romney is on the defensive.
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