Obama's plea for a second chance (Updated)
I know they are just words and there were some huge flaws in the speech but Obama --for all of his negatives and boy, he has them--can write and deliver a great address when he wants to. He revved up his base and probably reassured a good number of Indies.
Watching the speech reminds me what we are up against and it is formidable. Polls might be close, money might not be coming in as much as the O campaign would like, but the base is fired up, they are highly organized and will mobilize to GOTV.
For all of its good points, there was the unmistakeable stench of Success Envy and class warfare that permeated the speech. It was vintage Liberal Speak steeped in Occupy Theology. Rich pitted against the poor and middle class. Success pummeled every few paragraphs.
Although his speech contained classic Democratic talking points, Obama had the audacity to unabashedly pilfer traditional Republican principles and appropriated them as if he believed in them, embraced them and was guided by them: personal responsibility, a strong military, citizenship, patriotism, success! If my memory serves me correctly, he stole directly from Clint exclaiming "THIS DEMOCRACY IS OURS!!" OMG--right out of the mouths of conservatives.
While he demonized success, he claimed that it had to be earned, no one is entitled to it and that we honor the strivers (is that a word?), the dreamers, the entrepreneur. Again, from the mouths of conservatives. Occupiers must have been flipping out when he made these pronouncements.
He tried to marry the two ideologies and have it both ways. His appeal was clearly to the soft middle, the indies, the swing voters. We've seen this movie before, in 2008 when he convinced half the country that he was a moderate.
Hopefully, critical thinkers will see through the charade.
For all the talk and energy in that speech about creating jobs and growth and using money saved from the wars to pay down the debt and put people to work building roads and bridges (didn't we already do that? Wasn't that the Stimulus?), promising to do what America does best by creating 1/2 million manufacturing jobs in 2 1/2 years and creating 1 million new jobs in the next 4 years in both big and small factories, cutting oil imports, making us less dependent on foreign oil than in the last 20 years and increasing the mileage on a gallon gas, reforming the tax code and keeping jobs in America...discerning individuals have to wonder, IF YOU CAN DO THAT IN THE NEXT FOUR YEARS WHY COULDN'T YOU DO IT THE LAST FOUR YEARS?
He said he won't turn Medicare into a voucher, but hey, inquiring minds want to know: why are you taking $716 billion dollars from Medicare to fund Obamacare, leaving Medicare to go bankrupt by 2024?
Four years ago he had millions chanting "Yes We Can!' He had many Americans hoping and promised them change. He was elected on the basis that he could do it, he could fix this country, bring bipartisan change to Washington DC and right a sinking USS Dubya.
He said if he couldn't change the economy around, bring unemployment to under 8% and halve the deficit, then he was admittedly destined to be a one term president. Yet tonight he told us--he looked straight into the camera and looked the American people right in the eyes and stated: he never claimed this was gonna (his favorite word) be a quick and easy path, that it would take more than a few years to solve our challenges and therefore he is asking us--the economically embattled, fiscally fatigued and ubiquitously unemployed American--to not just vote for him, but to give him a second chance to finish his work.
In his mind, that's citizenship.
I hope the American people aren't rubes. For all of his talk, we know there will be no action. Whereas Obama, Biden and the Democrats are all fired up about ideas and words, Romney, Ryan and the Republicans are all fired up about solutions and results. Obama talked a lot about choice this election. The choice is obvious. Will the majority of Americans see it?
UPDATE
Russ Vaughn adds:
Oh, to be so damned with such faint praise. Liberal Fox News commentators, Joe Trippi and Kirsten Powers assessed the Obama acceptance speech in language essentially saying this:
"Well, it was a good speech but it wasn't up to Joe Biden's.''
I kid you not America, Mr. Hope and Change, he of the ringing oratory of the 2008 campaign, mister Master Blaster of the Teleprompter, is relegated to second-tier status by members of his own hallelujah chorus? By his own side? By people whose only known language is talking points memos from the Democratic National Committee? In what has to have been the most critical speech of his entire political career, to be bested by the Crown Prince of Gaffology, just reinforces what an empty suit resides in the Oval Office, so too, too, sadly due to that emotional and aberrational 2008 vote.
Obama is asking the very same America that shot itself in one foot in 2008, in a glaringly obvious attempt to absolve itself of racial guilt, to take a second shot this time around, straight into the other foot, all while assuring us that the anguishing pain in the first injured foot isn't really anything to be concerned about. Hell, that oughtta convince you.
Good grief, here we have our president being graded by his own supporters as a second banana to a greasy political shill like Joe Biden? That has to be a truly pathetic assessment by his own team of a man looking to persuade this country that he is deserving of a second term.
I don't believe America is buying it.