Back to Obamaville. Although they dress it up a bit, even the Associated Press recognizes that Obama is peddling (their preferred word) a modest American dream, or as Levin described Tuesday night, "a lifestyle that [liberals] believe we should live, nothing more, nothing less."
This excerpt is from Obama's Cedar Rapids, IA speech to hock his economic 'blueprint' the day after the SOTU address on January 25th:
"If you're willing to put in the work, the idea is that you should be able to raise a family and own a home; not go bankrupt because you got sick, because you've got some health insurance that helps you deal with those difficult times; that you can send your kids to college; that you can put some money away for retirement. That's all most people want. Folks don't have unrealistic ambitions. They do believe that if they work hard they should be able to achieve that small measure of an American Dream."
(You can find this segment starting @ 2:55)
Rush called it a despicably downsized American dream:
"Obama...made a statement that sets the bar so low for what he thinks is middle-class success, happiness, and achievement in this country...That's not all of what anybody wants. He's describing his own serfs...People stuck in the middle class in the safety net. They are taking government assistance and they're embarrassed and they don't like it and some of them have said with all the obstacles in our way, they don't think they can work hard enough to get out of it...Yeah, just want to be able to send your kids to college, put some money away for retirement. That's all most people want. They don't have unrealistic ambitions. They believe if they work hard they ought to be able to achieve that small measure. Man, what a limited view of potential freedom and possibility in America."
Levin says what he believes the American Dream is: "You work hard, you think hard. Sometimes you fail, sometimes you don't. And you'll achieve what you want to achieve." But then contrast that with Mark's reflection on Obama's mindset:
"You don't hear any of that in this Obama statement. You don't hear anything in here about the individual doing what the individual wants to do, individual ambition. You don't hear discussion about that. He's telling you the kind of life you should have, and part of it is not going bankrupt. So is that your objective in life: not going bankrupt? That's a pretty low objective...In fact, when he does use the word 'ambition', he says folks don't have unrealistic ambitions."
"This is a president who does not understand Americanism. This is a president who does not understand the history of this country, or rejects it. He's so consumed with rebuilding, reshaping, redesigning our society; he's so consumed with telling us what we must do, what we can do, what he'll allow us to do [that] he doesn't get it, so he's off on a different pursuit..."
"Why is it that Obama's ambitions are limitless? Why is it that his wife's ambitions are limitless? Why is it that all these politicians, there ambitions are limitless? But yours are not? Yours are 'realistic'. You see, you're only capable of doing certain things, particularly when you consider that Obama wants to control how you live: what kind of healthcare you can have, how much income you can have, when he wants to control the price of fuel, which effects the price of everything else, including food & clothing, transportation, what kind of automobile you can have through CAFE standards and environmental rules. In other words, he's telling you, 'People don't have these unrealistic ambitions.' What he's really saying is 'you better not have these unrealistic ambitions, because you're not gonna get to achieve them. You're not gonna get to pursue them.'"
"This is the most important, in recent time anyway, view into his mindset that you'll hear: what he thinks of you, the people; what he thinks of you, the individual."
This is how he thinks he's 'connecting' with the working man? The disconnect cannot be more profound. Obama has described practical wants and needs, or simply 'making it', as our 'ambitions', our 'dreams'. Mark surmises that this fits perfectly into the mold of the Left, "This is how they view you: as individuals, you don't have a lot of ambition, and if you do, you've gotta be reshaped and molded to fit what they want, what their notion of government requires." Kinda sounds like what Tocqueville described in the previous post about how the sovereign 'kneads' the individual to his liking, doesn't it?
