Brooklynbadboy wrote an excellent front-page piece about the "Winning The Future" strategy being employed by the White House to appeal to independent and swing voters for the 2012 campaign:
The president's budget slogan reflects a White House that is in full reelect mode, and the budget is one as well. But strictly on the merits of sloaganeering, it seems a rather hollow way to avoid talking about the twin proverbial 800-lb. silverbacks in the political room: the crisis in unemployment/underemployment and the housing crisis. When you read through the budget, it is a clear the numbers were designed around the slogan, and not around the gorillas. Certainly, this reflects the current state of affairs: With Republicans in control of the House, there is no chance this president will be given any lattitude to tackle the current crises aggressively and effectively. So, in what basically amounts to a throwing up of the hands, the president has designed a political strategy whose goal is to convince the American people to...ahem...hope.One day, we will all be super-educated and therefore able to outwit everyone else in some sort of global game. One day, we will build stuff again, like bridges and tunnels. One day, we will become a great manufacturing power again. But all of the things that allowed us to do these things in the past, like strong unions, industrial policy, inexpensive education, heavy regulation, and taxation that redistributed wealth downward will not be found in this budget because those things aren't on the table in any branch of government. What is on the table is a future, a future where everything will work out. We will win! Hooray for optimism!
Optimism currently is in short supply these days with the right-wing attacks on our middle class, the unions, our teachers, public servants, and on women and children's health. It may be nice to talk about "winning the future" but in the present, we are witnessing the unprecedented decimation of our middle class, with the shock doctrine in full effect with nary a response from our elected officials in Washington, D.C.