Inequality, the Flavor of the Month

Kathleen Geier, July 11, 2014

Last December, President Obama delivered a speech in which he boldly declared that economic inequality is a “defining issue of our time.” It was a watershed moment—an ambitious speech on a topic presidents rarely address, let alone at such at length. Commenters called the speech “historic.”

So much for history. Last week, the Washington Post’s Zachary A. Goldfarb reported that in recent months, Obama and Democrats have turned their backs on economic populism and “largely abandoned” talk about economic inequality.