President Obama delivered a fiery speech Friday at the DNC winter meeting, giving the party faithful a rallying cry they likely wished they had heard in 2014 and no doubt welcome for 2016.
Obama began with issue number one: jobs. Calling 2014 a "breakthrough year" for the U.S., he noted that more than three million jobs had been created, the best year since the 1990s. He also said the last five years have seen the longest stretch of private job creation in American history and added that, in "the single most hopeful sign" for middle-class families, wages are finally beginning to rise again.
"America's coming back," Obama said, "We have risen from recession, we have the capacity to write our own future and all that's thanks to the hard work of the American people, whom we serve."
Obama also chided Republicans for their "grand predictions of doom and gloom."
"I just want everyone to remember that at every step that we made these policies that made this progress, we were told by our good friends the Republicans that our actions would crush jobs and explode deficits and destroy the country," he told the crowd. "I want everybody to do a fact check … just go back and look at the statements that were made each year by these folks about all these policies."
Head below the fold for a few other key excerpts.
None of this is an accident
I always find it curious that when a Democrat's president, deficits go down. A Republican's president, and then the deficits are going up and yet, they try take on the mantle of fiscal probity. … None of this is an accident. It's not an accident that America is creating jobs faster than at any time since the last time a Democrat was president.
Middle-class economics works
If we're actually to look at the evidence, it's pretty clear whose theory of how to grow the economy and make sure the American people are prospering—which theory works. We know their ideas don't work, we remember. Middle-class economics, that works! Expanding opportunity, that works!
GOP rebranding
Now that their grand predictions of doom and gloom and death panels and armageddon haven't come true, the sky hasn't fallen, chicken little's quiet—the new plan of Republicans apparently, and this is progress, the new plan is to rebrand themselves as the party of the middle class. I'm not making this up.
On Mitch McConnell
Our Republican leader in the Senate, as he was coming in, after having tried to block every single thing that we have done to strengthen the economy, starts looking at the job numbers and says, "Ya know, it's getting better because we just got elected and people are feeling more optimistic." (Broad smile from Obama.) Which, okay, I didn't know that's how the economy worked but, maybe? We'll call some economists.
On income inequality
If you're really troubled with income inequality, then you can't put forward proposals that give tax breaks to those who are doing the best—millionaires and billionaires—and then propose cuts that help working Americans get ahead. If you want to be the party that's paving the way for people to get into the middle class, a good way to start is: stop trying to strip health insurance from millions of Americans, and limit contraceptive care for millions of women, and stop trying to deport millions of striving young kids who just want to earn their shot at the American dream like the rest of us.
On the GOP's shift in rhetoric
I think the shift in rhetoric that they're engaging in is good, if it actually leads them to taking different actions. If it doesn't, then it's just spin.