President Obama called upon the Congressional Black Caucus to recreate the kind of political magic that swept him into office two years ago. The prolonged economic slump has robbed the nation of some of the energy that helped him make history as the first black president.
“That’s what we need again. I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods, to go back to your workplaces, to go to churches and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops, and tell them we’ve got more work to do. Tell them we can’t wait to organize. Tell them that the time for action is now, and that if each and every person in this country who knows what is at stake steps up to the plate, if we are willing to rise to this moment like we’ve always done, then together we will write our own destiny once more,” he said.
In what might have been Obama’s greatest oratorical performance of the year, he equated what the previous administration has done to the nation and world economies as George W. Bush administration waywardly driving the car into a ditch from which it could not extricate itself. Obama’s economic and health care policies, he says, have laid the foundation and platform for the nation to catapult itself back to pre-recession prosperity.
“They [Republicans] drove the car into the ditch. We put on our boots. It was hot down there and we’re pushing the car and shoving it and we’re sweating,” he said, rousing the 3,000 plus crowd from their slumber for the first time.
“They’re standing on the sideline, sipping a slurpy, telling us that we’re not pushing it hard enough, we’re not shoving it hard enough. And then when we finally get the car back on the road, they’re going to yell ,‘We want the keys back!’” Obama added, his baritone pushed into overdrive as the crowd jumped to its feet.
“We have to tell them that you can’t have the keys back. You don’t know how to drive,” he continued as the throng thundered their approval of Obama’s line of thinking.
“Can’t have it back … If you want to move the car forward, you put it in ‘D’,” he said, making an obvious reference to voting Democratic. “If you want to go backwards, what do you do? You put it in ‘R’” [Republican].
The nation is in labor and Obama is trying help it birth new possibilities. He referenced previous unfathomable gains as a way to inspire the audience.
“Each and every time we’ve made epic change — from this country’s founding to Emancipation, to Women’s Suffrage, to workers’ rights — it has not come from a man. It has come from a plan. It has come from a grassroots movement rallying around a cause. That’s what the Civil Rights movement made possible — foot soldiers like so many of you, sitting down at lunch counters, standing up for freedom; what made it possible for me to be here today — Americans throughout our history making our union more equal, making our union more just, making our union more perfect, one step at a time.” — terry shropshire
