"This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the
middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. At
stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to
raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.
"Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering
from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same
practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same
policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many
years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to
fend for themselves and play by their own rules.
"Well, I’m here to say they are wrong."
The Washington Post publishes President Obama's speech on the middle class, given in the same town where Theodore Roosevelt gave his New Nationalism address in 1910.
Ben Soskis and Timothy Noah react in The New Republic.
As does Robert Reich in Salon.
And John Nichols and Ari Berman in The Nation.
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2 comments:
I guess I'm in the minority on this one. As you might've seen from Twitter, I thought the speech was timid, milquetoast, and way too little too late. My reaction basically parallel's Tim Egan's
Also, the generic TR quote he used was the second sentence of the 1910 speech. That's just pure laziness by the speechwriting team.
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