Rachel Maddow had an interesting take on Obama's speech (which received unbelievably high ratings by all viewers in several polls).
She said that when Clinton 'moved to the center' (i.e. right) after the midterm 1994 shellacking, the conservatives kept moving further and further to the right and so 'the center' kept moving further and further to the right. She pointed out that by today's conservative standards, Eisenhower would be a radical lefty and even Reagan might be too far left.
What Obama's speech allegedly did was to move the center sharply back toward the center; somehow Tucson may indeed have produced a seismic shift in politics. The Repug negative, attacking, fear-mongering messaging (vs. Obama's great 'hope') may no longer resonate... Jimmy Carter went negative on America during his re-election campaign and got clobbered. Obama may be shrewder and/or luckier than we thought. He still won't take on the corps:((
The corps are doing the same thing that the Conservatives do: they keep tilting the field more and more in their direction. First their attack on regulations, then bailouts, then huge bonuses for losing trillions of dollars, then firing millions of US workers and then going for "needed, earned and deserved lower tax rates".
They won't stop until they are overthrown, which will only happen as a result of overwhelming economic and social upheaval forces.
The solution: tax tax tax and regulate regulate regulate. Fine the crap out of the wealthy and corps. If they don't like it, let them move to the middle East or China or Europe after imposing a huge 'exit tax'. All the debate about tax rates, govt regulations, free markets is propaganda. There are no free markets and markets do not police themselves. The markets are completely rigged for the big players and corps; sometimes a few of them go under if they endanger their "govt bailout net" or are too overtly corrupt. CEO's and executives keep getting big bonuses regardless.
