You can watch President Obama's speech from Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio here. Follow the updates in this post and join the discussion in the comments.
11:04 AM PT: President Obama is just getting underway as we start the second thread of this liveblog.
11:05 AM PT: "Over the next five months, this election will take many twists and many turns, polls will go up and polls will go down, there will be no shortage of gaffes ... you may have heard I recently made my own unique contribution to that process."
11:05 AM PT: "There is one place where I stand in complete agreement with my opponent. This election is about our economic future."
11:07 AM PT: "This election presents a choice between two fundamentally different directions for building sustained economic growth." This election, Obama says, is about how to make sure everybody has a fair shot at succeeding, and making sure that hard work gets rewarded. "This isn't some abstract debate ... this is the defining issue of our time, and I mean it. This is a make or break moment for our middle class, and I believe it."
11:07 AM PT: "What is holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different views of which direction America should take. And this election is your chance to break that stalemate."
11:08 AM PT: "Nothing is more important than an honest debate about where these two paths would lead us."
11:10 AM PT: President Obama is now going back and outlining how we got to where we are now'so far, it sounds very much like what he said in his Kansas speech on giving everybody a fair shot. He's offering an indictment of the failed trickle down policies that allowed the wealthiest Americans to do better than ever, but left the middle-class behind.
11:12 AM PT: Talking about Bush's Great Recession, Obama says net worths fell seven times faster than even in 1929.
11:13 AM PT: Unlike Europe, Obama points out, "our economy started growing again six months after I took office and it's been growing for the past three months."
11:14 AM PT: Obama: In the past 27 months, the private sector created more jobs than in the previous seven years combined.
11:14 AM PT: And unlike those who wanted to just let Detroit go bankrupt, we bet on the American auto worker and today that industry is "on top of the world."
11:15 AM PT: "But not only are we digging out from a hole that was 9 million jobs deep, we're digging out from a hole that was a decade in the making." That second hole: the erosion of economic security for the middle class.
11:16 AM PT: "Of course the economy isn't where it needs to be," Obama says. "Of course we have a lot more to do. Everybody knows that." The question in the election is how will we grow?
11:17 AM PT: Obama says Romney believes the best way to grow the economy is from "the top down." I think Romney agrees'that's why he always talks about "Job creators" and wants to cut their taxes and cut back regulations to protect the environment, consumers, and workers.
11:19 AM PT: Obama describes Romney's tax cut plan as a $5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy. The tax cut overall is $10 trillion, but part of the tax cut Obama supports, and wouldn't go exclusively to wealthy Americans.
11:21 AM PT: If you're one of the 11 people watching on CNN and just had your feed cut off, join us here at Daily Kos!
11:23 AM PT: Obama slams Romney's tax cut in particular because it would require taxes to go up and services to go down on regular Americans. "If you want to give the policies of the last decade another try, then you should vote for Mitt Romney. You should vote for his allies in Congress. You should take them at their word, and they will take you down that path. And Mr. Romney is qualified to deliver on that plan. (Laughter.) No, he is."
11:24 AM PT: "I believe their approach is wrong and I am not alone. I have not seen a single independent analysis that says my opponents economic plan would reduce the deficit."
No comments:
Post a Comment