Pounding the Stump

Obama at the Top

How far will empty Marxist rhetoric take him?

Yesterday's content was all about love, which evidently - going by the comment traffic - you pricks didn't appreciate, so we're  slipping back into something more comfortable. People whose guts we hate. If nothing else, allegations of an Obama-Rama knob-polishing now sends me all asniker when I hear mention of his "stem-winder" of a  "stump-speech."  Ahem.  Or, maybe it's just me.  Anyway, Daniel Henninger has a very sober analysis of Obama's rhetoric in today's Opinion Journal [Obama at the Top].  There's video to accompany the more substantive text, but for the lazy  I've burned my own copy (click above pic) of the video, also suitable for e-mail at a paltry 2.1 Mb, and include some snippets below.  “ The senator's charisma and appeal has been undeniable. He is almost insanely eloquent. Still, about halfway into this (very long) speech, the feeling was hard to shake: This is getting hard to listen to. Again and again. The conventional critique of Sen. Obama has held that his pitch is perfect but at some point he'll need to make the appeal more concrete. Here is the edited version, stripped of the flying surfboard: "Our road will not be easy . . . the cynics. . . where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits . . . That's what happens when lobbyists set the agenda. . . It's a game where trade deals like Nafta ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart . . . It's a game . . . CEO bonuses . . . while another mother goes without health care for her sick child . . . We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace . . . even if they're not rich . . ." Here's his America: "lies awake at night wondering how he's going to pay the bills . . . she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill . . . the senior I met who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt . . . the teacher who works at Dunkin' Donuts after school just to make ends meet . . . I was not born into money or status . . . I've fought to bring jobs to the jobless in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant . . . to make sure people weren't denied their rights because of what they looked like or where they came from . . . Now we carry our message to farms and factories." ”