That's The Point

I just watched the President Obama give an impassioned plea to the House Dems to stand tough and get a working economic stimulus bill passed.  That speech was some powerful stuff.  No more cool Barry.  He infused his inspirational style from the campaign trail with the newly acquired leverage of the bully pulpit.  The result was a searing and targeted rebuttal of the last forty-eight hours of GOP childishness on the stimulus bill.

Unfortunately the whole messaging thing that Obama is expected to excel in was not going to well the past few days.  You have the word "pork" showing up along side the stimulus bill in media reports on an increasing basis. The GOP pushback has been successful in muddying the waters by focusing the public eye on minutiae that doesn't even add up to 1% of the bill and ignoring the ridiculous amount of inane tax cuts being left in the plan.

The appearance was part of a ramping up and reclaiming the message campaign that also included a speech earlier in the day as well as this op-ed in the WaPo. I think he would do the cause well to take some of the more direct points in tonight's speech and embed them in the media echo chamber for the next few days. 

I can hear it now, "That's the point of a stimulus bill, you spend money" being repeated all over cable news land.  Enlisting the governors to not only get out there and pump up the plan and make one last plea for increased aid to states and infrastructure spending wouldn't hurt either.

It would be a damn shame if this thing ends up passing as a watered down shell with little chance of having an impact on job creation and GDP growth.

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