The Romney and Ryan campaign had a convention, and the Obama
and Biden campaign is going to have one. What should we expect the message will
be that the Obama camp will want to communicate to the electorate? Well, for
one thing, it will most likely be a response to the message that was delivered
by Romney and his surrogates. The latter said to the electorate they are the
camp that values those who start a business or win a gold medal at the
Olympics. Thus, Obama and his surrogates will most likely tell the 150 million
American workforce that they value all its members whether they start a
business or they don't, whether they win a gold medal at the Olympics or they
don't, whether they belong to a union or they don't. Theirs is the authentic
American dream that must never be downgraded by those who pursue a more
glamorous avocation.
In fact, the Romney people trashed everyone that works for a
living because they never developed what the Romney people believe the American
dream ought to be about. They trashed the teachers because they may be members
of a union or may someday vote to join one. They trashed the steelworkers
because they ask for a living wage. They trashed the government workers because
they will receive a pension when they retire. They trashed the hospital workers
because they may wish to keep ObamaCare. They trashed every working man and
woman in the country that did not start a business or win a gold medal at the
Olympics. And so, the Obama people will most likely tell these people they have
a place for them in their own tent. They will tell them: Come to us because we
value the honest work that you do, and because you live the American dream that
suits you; not the one that suits Romney or Ryan or any of their surrogates.
The Obama team will tell the electors it needs them not only
to win the presidential election but also win the congressional elections
because the House of Representative, which is dominated by the Romney and Ryan
camp, is where the dream has been stalled for the millions of Americans who are
now looking for a job but cannot find one. It happened that in their attempt to
force the Obama people to allow them to fleece the middle class more than it
has already been fleeced, the Romney and Ryan team has for all practical
purposes sabotaged the machinery of government, and held as hostage the
unemployed Americans and their families with the aim of giving the rich more
than they know what to do with. And the Obama surrogates will assert that the
thing to do now is reverse the effects of the 2010 elections so as to renew the
mandate it had given the Obama team to implement the program of hope and change
on which the team was working when it was hit by the interruption of the mid
term elections.
In explaining their philosophy of life, the Obama surrogates
will tell the electors that life is not an all-or-nothing proposition, and it
is not an either or proposition. You can be working for someone today, start a
business tomorrow in which you employ people to work for you but then hit on
hard times and lose the business in which case you will go work for someone
else again – maybe even the person you once hired to work for you, and now has
his own business. There is no shame in this because the line separating the
working class from the class of proprietors is a very thin one indeed. But
whether you own a business that hits the hard times, or you work in a business
that is hit by hard times, the government ought to be here to give you a second
chance, help you cross to a better time if possible or soften the blow on you
and your family till you chart a new course for yourself and thus start a new
life. This is why we are a civilized nation and not a gulag of savage
capitalists the way that this philosophy lives in the heads of Mitt Romney and
Paul Ryan and their surrogates.
The Obama-Biden team will tackle the subject of jobs by
directly responding to the call of the Romney-Ryan team that invited them to
forget about the past and talk instead about their record. Yes, we'll talk
about our record will say the Obama surrogates, but we shall do so to compare
it with your record. The message will be that the nation was losing 750
thousand jobs a month when they took office but the team kept the dream alive and
worked hard to pass the healthcare system that the nation had wanted for nearly
a century. In the meantime, the Obama team has managed to gradually reduce the
loss of jobs, and then turn it into a gain of jobs averaging 150 thousand
workers a month. And this is a turnaround of 900 thousand jobs a month which is
better than anything the nation had ever seen before. This election is indeed
about the Romney record of losing 750 thousand jobs a month without someone
obstructing their people, against the Obama team gaining 150 thousand jobs a
month despite the obstruction mounted by the Romney people and maintained to
this day.
To continue with the presentation, the Obama people will
point out that the record goes on to show the Romney people got so angry so
openly by this victory, they went on the offensive and demagogued the
healthcare accomplishment as they tried to defeat it. The Romney camp lost this
battle but won a huge majority in the House of Representatives. This done, they
started to throw sand in the machinery of government hoping to reverse the jobs
gain and turn it into a jobs loss, thus make life so miserable for the American
people that they will want to defeat Obama, allow Romney to win the race to the
White House after which they hope to repeal the healthcare system they so
despise, and return the nation back to the economic system that caused it to
lose 750 thousand workers a month.
To divert attention from that record, Romney promises to
create 12 million jobs in 4 years, but at the rate that his team was losing
jobs, it will take them 16 months to lose another 12 million, not gain any of
that. The result will be a return to the old misery for 150 million Americans
except maybe for the few who will see their dream realized by winning a medal
at the Olympics, or the few who will start a business that may or may not
succeed. No, you cannot build a nation -- let alone maintain the status of a
superpower -- by dreaming idle dreams, and by repeating the refrain of being so
exceptional, we jail 2 million of our people and leave another 3 million in the
streets because we cannot train them to keep a gainful job, but rely on
foreigners to come to our shores and save us from ourselves. What kind of
screwed up exceptionalism is this? How can someone feel exceptional for
standing on the shoulder of someone else and not feel shame?
No, will say the Obama team, we shall invent a new kind of
exceptionalism. Like the good old days when we did not have to bray a phony
exceptional status, we shall again let others judge us on their own. They will
do so not by measuring our effort to attract people who may no longer want to
come to our shores because they see alternatives elsewhere in a world that is
moving faster than ever before -- but judge us by the effort we make in
training our people to do the work that foreign geniuses do for us at this
time. These people invent and make the products we used to make but no longer
do; products we now buy from abroad and pay not with money we do not have but
with IOUs that come in the form of corporate, municipal and treasury bonds.
In fact -- will say the Obama surrogates -- despite the
sabotage that was carried out by the other side, we have managed to revive the
manufacturing sector, and have launched a program to train beginners as well as
retrain those who lost an old job, to do the kind of work that exists today.
Our pledge is that if you renew our mandate, it will be steady as she goes with
continued improvement in the rate of economic growth as time moves on. But if you
give us back the House of Representatives, you will see that the turnaround of
900 thousand jobs we were able to score in the past, has given us the knowledge
and the experience to create between 250 thousand and 400 thousand new jobs a
month. And we shall maintain this rate of new hires till we get the country
back to its full potential.