(CONNECTICUT) – Yesterday’s address by the president was the culmination of weeks of fret, wailing and dread over Obama’s troubled “messaging.” With unemployment rising in May, Republicans victorious in Wisconsin and the media’s maddening focus on “gaffes,” many said that Obama appeared adrift. Meanwhile, Republican Mitt Romney has offered daily reminders that the economy is bad, bad, bad, and that there’s only one person to blame, while raking in record sums of campaign cash. It’s really no wonder that Democrats were starting to freak.
I sense Obama’s hour-long talk outside of Cleveland, which was billed as a major economic address by his aides, didn’t do much to quell those concerns. But it was the right move politically, because it redirected attention to where it rightly belongs: on the failed Republican policies of the last decade.
“Gov. Romney and the Republicans who run Congress believe that if you simply take away regulations and cut taxes by trillions of dollars, the market will solve all of our problems on its own. If you agree with that, you should vote for them and I promise you they will take us in that direction,” he said.
“I believe we need a plan for better education and training and for energy independence, rebuilding our infrastructure, for a tax code that creates jobs in America and pays down our debt in a way that’s balanced. I have that plan; they don’t. And if you agree with me, if you believe this economy grows best when everybody gets a fair shot, and everybody does their fair share, and everybody plays by the same set of rules, then I ask you to stand with me for a second term.”
Importantly, Obama hinted at something that Democrats are beginning to express publicly: that Republican policies of the past got us into this mess and that Republican intransigence of right now is keeping us here. “What’s holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between two fully different views of which direction America should take,” Obama said, “and this election is your chance to break that stalemate.”
Turns out, the idea that Republicans have chosen inaction on the economy to hurt Obama’s re-election changes isn’t a lefty delusion. According to a poll by the liberal website Daily Kos, 49 percent of respondents said the GOP is intentionally stalling the economy. Among independent voters, fully half agreed. The same goes for 61 percent of moderates.
The facts can’t be ignored. Every jobs bill that the president has sent to the House has been killed there by the Republicans. This isn’t because of ideological disagreements. This is raw power politics. The GOP’s stated goal has been ousting Obama, and one way of doing that is to say no to almost everything he proposes and then blame him for not accomplishing more. Romney and the Republicans call it a failed presidency. Psychologists might call it living with a bunch of people with Borderline Personality Disorder.
Prior to yesterday’s address, Obama had been backpedaling since the release of a video using Romney’s past as head of a private-equity firm to undermine his central claim to the presidency: that he is uniquely endowed with the ability to create jobs. The video is about the plight of former steel workers who witnessed their livelihoods disappear after Bain loaded up their company with debt, filed for bankruptcy, reneged on pension obligations and fired the staff. But Republicans and Democrats with close ties to Wall Street took this as an attack on private equity in general.
That’s when Cory Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark whose career has soared thanks to Wall Street money, said he found the video “nauseating,” giving the impression that Obama is not leading a united front. Former President Bill Clinton, whose administration cut the last cord of regulation between Wall Street and the New Deal, made things worse when he defended private equity, raising suspicion that he was vicariously speaking for Romney. The blow-up over the video also led to a fatuous debate on cable news on whether Romney’s background is fair game (um, it is). This week, Politico reported that Romney’s fundraising on Wall Street is beating Obama’s by 7-to-1. Nearly 20 of Romney’s new donors supported the president four years ago.
Some in the press said yesterday’s speech shows that the president doesn’t think a populist campaign will alienate the big-money donors. I think he does, but more importantly, he knows it doesn’t matter what he does. Wall Street is richer than ever, yet it rallies around Romney, a native son. Even if Obama were to cast himself as a “New Democrat,” as Clinton did, it wouldn’t help. And if he can’t win the election with mass cash, then maybe he can win with mass votes.
There was more at stake in Obama’s speech than fixing a “messaging” problem. He could have changed course but decided to stay put and draw our attention to the larger picture. That takes guts, a comfort to freaking Democrats.