Obama's Cleveland Speech: War Of The Worlds

Jillian Bandes | September 08, 2010 3:27 PM

Most of Obama's 30 minute diatribe in Cleveland was pretty much a holocaust for anyone still holding out for bipartisanship in America. If you listened closely, you could hear a few whispers of concrete policy ideas seeping through his thick-as-molasses anti-GOP rhetoric. But they may have just been offshoot gurgles from a Commander in Chief who is determined to distribute the hate as widely as possible as his party braces for a suffocating mid-term defeat.

It would've been amusing, if it hadn't been so depressing. Obama spent most of his time criticizing House Minority Leader John Boehner, continuing the war that has gone on between the two party leaders since Boehner told Obama to fire his entire economic team and start from scratch two weeks ago. Since then, Obama has punched back in press releases and official statements, and Boehner has continued his campaign with media appearances and Twitter messages. Today, Obama upped the ante by stopping just short of saying that the two parties were at war. Referring to economic policy, he said:

That's the difference between the Republican vision, and the Democratic vision, and that’s what this election is all about.

Obama threw some of his weight behind extending the Bush tax cuts for Americans making under $250,000 (for those of you who are still confused as to why that's a bad idea, I refer you to this excellent video). He also spoke out in support of reforming the tax code to more protectionist tax policy, to theoreticaly keep American jobs from going overseas (forget about the fact that these policies drive down quality and eventually hurt our competitiveness). The way he couched these arguments, though, was the alarming part.

So let me be clear to Mr. Boehner and everybody else. We should not hold middle class tax cuts hostage any longer.

First of all, Obama is explaining the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for everyone else except his voting bloc -- those making under 250k -- as "holding middle class tax cuts hostage." That's a disingenuous way of characterizing the Republican position that the cuts should be extended to all Americans regardless of income. Second of all, he's recognizing that Mr. Boehner is indeed speaking for "everybody else" -- i.e., the majority of Americans who don't approve of the way Obama is handling the economy. It's interesting that Obama has simply written all of them off, even in light of the political triage that Democrats are conducting in this upcoming election.