"The speech Obama will never deliver, but unless he does, the way it looks today, he'll lose, in which event, we all lose."
And now, what Obama needs to say:
You out there: The Republicans have a plan: Get rid of the opposition once and forever, and that includes me. Their other plan--that especially brilliant second plan--calls for austerity: cut back sharply on government expenditures and give still more of a tax break to the one-per centers who, magically, will voluntarily share the money they save with the rest of us in order to create jobs and 'stimulate the economy.'
We're still waiting, waiting for over thirty years for the big moment. To use the phrase the Republicans now shy from using in their speeches because it's so embarrassing--waiting for this largesse to 'trickle down.'
Why are we waiting? Because it's a myth the Republican Party embraced in 1980 so they could elect a Republican to the White House. Within four [check that] months, the man who brought trickle down [also known as supply-side economics] to Ronald Reagan's attention publicly confessed it was a political gimmick--and that's all it every was. There was no reason to believe it would ever work.
So I ask you to think about this--think very hard about this--why do Romney and the Republican brain trust still insist that 'supply-side' is the magic cure-all for our profound and dangerous economic and employment ills?
The answer: there must be a few Republican politicians and some Democrats who honestly believe this is the solution, but to them, it can be no more than an article of faith rather than fact. It does sound so good.
That's the only complicated part of the explanation. The other part is very clear and simple: there are politicians, most of them, who know it's a cynical, useless plan but, as cynics, they also know you were raised almost from infancy to believe them because you and they belong to the same political party.
That's no way to vote and that is definitely no way to run a government, not in this country. Some Republicans in Congress have made it as clear as can be: their first objective is not to cure anything but instead to wipe out the Democratic Party 'forever.' That includes the likes of me; if you believe them, I wasn't even born in America.
It's one thing to believe in God, to believe in our church or temple or synagogue, it's quite another and quite frightening to blindly place your faith in a political party, any political party, convert from a party into a religion just because it has been your party and perhaps your father's party most or all of your life: Republicans are always in the right; Democrats always in the wrong. You can justifiably reverse that formula if you want, although the Democrats I know are a bit more forgiving...[smile] some of them, some of the time.
The saddest and most undemocratic part of all this is that today's Republican candidate for president and today's Congressional Republicans are determined to take absolute control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House. They want all the marbles, power for the sake of power.
They, the Republican candidate and his Congressional colleagues [many of whom dislike him but loathe me] insist that in the three and a half years I've occupied the Oval Office I have failed to improve the economy. That's a big wow, a whopper that so many of those who can reliably be counted on to vote Republican blindly accept as the one and only truth worth discussing.
Okay, let's discuss it. This shouldn't take long. A President, no President can turn things around all by himself. No one man, no one President, especially in these complex and critical times can turn government around. Not without the support of Congress. And that's as it should be...but isn't.
This is no longer one nation indivisible. Sadly, it's them against us; it's all-out war.
I haven't had the support of Congress--thanks to the intractable Republican members of the House and Senate who, for the most obvious and ill-tempered reasons of all, reject even items on the agenda that they once supported...merely because I now support them. I can anticipate the sneers and the accusations of me whining when they know full well how they have deliberately and maliciously stopped cold any progress toward solution of our enormous social and economic problems.
In the Senate, the opposition no longer has to exhaust itself filibustering. Under present rules, all Republicans have to do is threaten to filibuster--and legislation dies before it is born. Congress comes to a screeching half. That's been true throughout my presidency.
As to the House of Representatives, now controlled by the Republicans, they don't have to threaten. They are in charge and they don't want the opposition to have any say in governing...so long as they can help it. And it seem they aim to help it forever.
Reelect a Republican majority to the House but should they be displeased enough to see me re-elected as president, the likelihood is the nation will be treated to a lot more of nothing of items of life that over the last fifty years or so have proved vital, even precious.
Actually, if Mr. Romney replaces me, you can count on their voting at last...to diminish or destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare and a fair wage. And, God help this nation, the Republicans, controlled by the right-wing of the party, will get their way unless you help stop them.
They've been lying all along about how 'unAmerican, how socialist, how communist' Social Security, Medicare, fair wage and now unions are.
Because of your blind faith in one party, you will probably go along with these wild claims...until it's too late to realize how seriously you've damaged your own futures.
Let's look at this a slightly different way: let's say you elect Mr. Romney and put a Republican majority in both Houses. It is safe to assume that they will enforce heavy government cutbacks; that means heavy government layoffs. Hundreds and thousands of layoffs. Do you think, as they claim, that will lessen our debt?
You'd be wrong: thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands of newly discharged government employees will be entitled to unemployment insurance, money that comes directly out of government coffers--directly out of your pockets--and when that runs out? One of two conditions will prevail. The worse? These unfortunate government employees, fired too early to qualify for adequate retirement benefits, will end up receiving welfare that they too would rather avoid as they would the plague. But, as a practical and humane matter, you've got to feed and house your family somehow.
Others laid off might have been prudent enough to have put something aside to assure minimun survival. But--BUT--they will no longer have the kind of expendable income needed to feed the economy. Net result, less economic recovery rather than more.
As for me, I have been wrong, at times terribly wrong, trying to accommodate a stubborn and unified band of men and women from the other party in my naive belief that they have the public interest foremost in mind when they act. My nature and upbringing made it impossible for me to believe they were not acting in good faith--not until now--not until now when it has become impossible to ignore that my opposition is far more enthusiastic in pursuing absolute power that in pursuing the health and well-being of the American people. I've had three and a half years to gather the evidence and it has finally sunk in.
I've been a wimp and maybe weaker than I should have been but, from now until Election Day, I shall make it my business to tell the naked truth about them, making it as clear as humanly possible that in opposing this White House's practical proposals in favor of lies, distortions and empty promises they are doing great harm to America and to democracy itself.
I beg you to put aside blind faith in one political party or the other in favor of using the common sense God did mean for you to use.
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