middle class

Obama's address soared with idealism and savaged the elitist policies of John McCain.

Barack Obama met his moment in Denver on Thursday.

The media feverishly raised expectations for Obama's address, while Republicans had relentlessly pre-branded the large grassroots gathering as some kind of celebrity spectacle. From the moment he marched on stage, however, Obama beat inflated expectations and dispatched his GOP detractors.

His speech was both soaring and chilling, imbued with heartening idealism and wonkish detail; it deftly called for a new, civil politics while also issuing a call to arms against the lethal failures of the incumbent administration. Zeroing in on his Republican opponent, Obama honored John McCain's integrity while questioning his temperament. Declining to impugn the motives for McCain's many policy reversals, Obama simply savaged the Republican's recent embrace of an elitist economic agenda. Obama rejected the political ploys of fear and deceit, but used McCain's platform and recent statements to depict the Washington fixture as an out-of-touch figure from a bygone era, clueless to middle class struggles, ignorant of the definition of rich in the federal tax code, and generally stuck "grasping at the ideas of the past." … [Read more]

In the milder last years of the Franco era in Spain, with the regime doing more appealing than dictating to the public, roadside signs went up warning of wildfires: “When the Forest Burns It Is Your Forest Burning.” Soon a derisive “Sir Count!” could be read scrawled at the end of one of them. … [Read more]