Obama's Golden Mojo Opportunity

[fencesitter]

Dick Polman's Blog: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/americandebate/Obamas_golden_mojo_opportunity.html

The Wall Street meltdown has provided Barack Obama with perhaps his best opportunity to extricate himself from the sludge poured so copiously by his opponents. This is serious stuff, unlike the various pig/lipstick/Britney/Paris/Palin sideshows, and, quite frankly, if Obama can't turn this economic crisis to his political advantage, he doesn't deserve to win. Indeed (and here I am updating one of my old lines), if the Democrats can't win a presidential election in this climate, they should simply go out of business, just like Lehman Brothers, and take up residence in the history wing of the Smithsonian Museum, sharing a display window with the Whigs.

The present opportunity has these components:

1. Most voters have been telling pollsters for a long time that America is on the "wrong track," and that they dislike President Bush's stewardship of the economy. Bush has been in charge for the past eight years; Republicans have run Congress for most of that time. Obama, as the nominee of the party that is generally more trusted on economic issues, is better positioned than John McCain to remind voters that the current economic woes have occurred on the GOP's watch. McCain has the burden of trying to distance himself from the governing party, which happens to be his. The old James Carville advice ("It's the economy, stupid") is new again.

2. The current crisis, particularly the mortgage meltdown, is the direct result of Republican deregulation policies, the notion that Wall Street and the free market works best when supervised least. In reality, that's when human greed - the dark side of free enterprise - rises to the fore. Not to get into the weeds here, but the housing bubble burst because the commercial banks, stock firms, and hedge funds were allowed to engage in Ponzi-like mortgage swaps - thanks to two deregulation measures pioneered by Senate Republicans back when they ran the chamber at the end of the Bill Clinton era (and, yes, Clinton signed off). Taken together, these two laws seriously loosened oversight of the financial community.

3. The prime mover behind those GOP deregulation efforts was Senator Phil Gramm of Texas. The name might ring a bell. That's the same Phil Gramm who has long been tight with McCain - and vice versa, since it was McCain who chaired Gramm's failed run for the presidency in 1996. Gramm, in his current incarnation as a banker, was also serving this year as McCain's chief economic advisor until he was bounced from the post after referring to Americans as "whiners" suffering "a mental recession." Obama now has the opportunity to repeatedly tie McCain to Gramm and hence to the deregulation climate fostered by Gramm.

******points #4, 5 & 6 plus more,

I'd keep posting, but I'm at the 4 paragraph limit.

Nevertheless, points one through six should be enough to help Obama regain his mojo. If he can't do it now, he may never.

[liberalmuse]

1. Thankfully, he is doing it now.

His speech today was amazing and he hit on all the points he needed to regarding the economy, and how he spoke out and wrote legislation to help prevent what is happening right now, he was going to put it on the road to recovery, and how he would put into place preventative measures to ensure this will not happen again. Anyone who did not see his speech in Golden, CO today MUST watch!

[MarjorieG]

2. Has it been on TV?

[DrPresident]

3. Somebody on that philly.com page

in the comments section, listed all of the congressman who received money from freddie mac and Obama was one of the people listed. Is that true, did he receive money from freddie mac?