Perhaps inevitably, at every political stress point liberals knock themselves out urging Obama to say precisely the things he's been saying nonstop since he first appeared on our horizon. The latest to
succumb to the temptation is Michael Tomasky:
...politically I don’t think fairness is enough. Average Americans care
about fairness, but not really all that much. People who have incomes
comfortably above the median but who still aren’t rich are going to
suspect that fairness means something is coming out of their hide. What
they do care about, though, is growth. Everybody from Bill Gates to his
janitor wants the economy to grow. So the case for these programs that
Obama needs to make consistently going forward is not the case for their
fairness, but the case that these policies, and not tax cuts for the
wealthy or more draconian domestic budget cuts or less regulation, will
promote growth.
Yup, if only Obama would say something like "in America, our prosperity has always risen from
the bottom-up" and make the case that prosperity is not sustainable when inequality is rising. As he did in
Raleigh, NH in June 2008:
We've done this because in America, our prosperity has always risen from
the bottom-up. From the earliest days of our founding, it has been the
hard work and ingenuity of our people that's served as the wellspring of
our economic strength. That's why we built a system of free public high
schools when we transitioned from a nation of farms to a nation of
factories. That's why we sent my grandfather's generation to college,
and declared a minimum wage for our workers, and promised to live in
dignity after they retire through the creation of Social Security.
That's why we've invested in the science and research that have led to
new discoveries and entire new industries. And that's what this country
will do again when I am President of the United States.
And in Georgetown in
April 2009:
