If, like me, you missed the president’s 99-percent-focused speech in Osawatomie, Kansas yesterday, here’s the video:


Osawatomie, this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.

Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.

I am here to say they are wrong.

Eli Sanders is The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won this,...

2 replies on “Obama’s Teddy Roosevelt Moment”

  1. I thought he said he was in Texas? Oh well, with 57 states, it’s easy to get confused.

    In a previous speech, he was using the 2% and 98% pairing. Does he really think we are that stupid not to notice?

  2. This is not a Teddy Roosevelt moment. Teddy Roosevelt preferred that the federal government “assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations
    doing an interstate business.”

    His greatest act was appoint White to the Supreme Court.

    If Obama just restored the economic protection created to avoid the great depression than that would be a Teddy moment.

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