Clinton used his speech both to defend Obama’s record and to rebut charges aimed at the president at last week’s Republican convention.
He attacked Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan for criticizing Obama’s $716 billion cut in Medicare, part of the health-care law passed in 2010. Noting that Ryan has made the same cuts in his budget, he said, “You know it takes some brass to attack a guy for doing something you did.”
More from PostPolitics
THE FIX | Washington simply can't walk and chew gum.
FACT CHECKER | Rep. Michele Bachmann claims the IRS will have control of a vast database with the most intimate health-care secrets of Americans. Not so.
“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us,” the president said.
He attacked Republicans for accusing Obama of gutting the work requirement in the welfare reform act approved during the Clinton administration. The claim, he said, “is just not true.” He ridiculed Romney’s deficit reduction plan, saying it doesn’t pass the simple test of arithmetic. “The numbers don’t add up,” he said
Clinton sought to define November’s election as a clear, even stark choice, arguing that Republicans believe in “a parallel universe” about what makes the economy tick. “In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president’s reelection was pretty simple: We left him a total mess, he hasn’t finished cleaning it up yet, so fire him and put us back in,” Clinton said.
Clinton, with an eye on independent swing voters, talked at some length about how the GOP has become more rigid and uncooperative. “Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats,” Clinton said. He added that one reason Obama deserved reelection was that “he is still committed to constructive cooperation.”
Clinton and Warren represent two different wings of the Democractic party — with Clinton the original architect of the centrist New Democrat philosophy that built bridges to business and brought the party back to the White House in the 1990s, and Warren a strong voice for the progressive grassroots activists who have led an attack on Wall Street, big corporations and the so-called “one percent.”
Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who is fighting to unseat Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), got a huge response when she took the stage just ahead of Clinton. She delivered a populist blast, attacking what she said was a rigged system in which Wall Street and corporate America have profited while the middle class has been “chipped, squeezed and hammered.”
She sharply criticized Romney and his vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan for a budget blueprint that she said would “pulverize financial reform, voucher-ize Medicare, and vaporize Obamacare.” But she saved some of her toughest rhetoric for Romney’s contention that corporations are people.
“No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people,” she said. “People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters. That matters because we don’t run this country for corporations. We run it for people. And that’s why we need Barack Obama.”
Wednesday’s other speakers systematically tore apart virtually every aspect of Romney’s record and views. For the second straight night, Democratic speakers highlighted Romney’s personal wealth to cast him as far out of touch with the nation’s middle class.
The Post Most: PoliticsMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Photos. Streaming. Conversation. Updates from the ground and the Web.
Loading...
Comments