Katrina vanden Heuvel: Progressive action can move the candidates

[marmar]

from the WaPo:



By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Published: June 19


After a rough few weeks, filled with disappointing economic news and distracting political gaffes, President Obama finally had a rare throw-down-the-mike moment. In a highly anticipated campaign speech in Ohio last Thursday, he clearly and unequivocally framed the November election as a choice, not simply “between two candidates or two political parties, but between two paths for our country.”

The choice is indeed a stark one: a return to the failed Bush policies of unregulated markets and antitax fundamentalism that served the 1?percent as they failed the country; or concerted government action to rebuild the middle class as the foundation for sustained economic growth. As Obama said, “this is not another trivial Washington argument.”

Mitt Romney is not, whatever the press might have people believe, a Massachusetts moderate. He is honestly proposing that we sustain massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and slash basic services and programs for working families. He is honestly proposing that the financial institutions that arrogantly sank our global economy and destroyed people’s lives be left free of any and all regulation. In short, he is honestly proposing that we turn this car around and drive off the same cliff again. (At least Romney is being honest about something. He spends most of his time telling unabashed lies about the president and his policies.)

Congressional Republicans, who seem to think that our national crisis is that millionaires don’t get enough tax breaks, have obstructed almost all of Obama’s efforts to create more jobs, invest in the future and reduce the deficit. They are holding our nation’s economic recovery hostage on the premise that if the president fails, and the economy fails, then Romney will win. Working families are just collateral damage. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-progressive-action-can-move-the-candidates/2012/06/19/gJQAdi17nV_story.html