Before getting into the details of his plan, Obama sought to define American poverty in moral terms, borrowing on a question asked 40 years ago by Robert Kennedy:

It's been four decades since Bobby Kennedy crouched in a shack along the Mississippi Delta and looked into the wide, listless eyes of a hungry child. Again and again he tried to talk to this child, but each time his efforts were met with only a blank stare of desperation. And when Kennedy turned to the reporters traveling with him, with tears in his eyes he asked a single question about poverty in America:

"How can a country like this allow it?"

Forty years later, we're still asking that question. It echoes on the streets of Compton and Detroit, and throughout the mining towns of West Virginia. It lingers with every image we see of the 9th Ward and the rural Gulf Coast, where poverty thrived long before Katrina came ashore...

Obama returned to the question posed by Kennedy to introduce the moral thesis of his address:

How can a country like this allow it?

No matter how many times it's asked or what the circumstances are, the most American answer I can think of to that question is two words:

"We can't."

We can't allow this kind of suffering and hopelessness to exist in our country. We can't afford to lose a generation of tomorrow's doctors and scientists and teachers to poverty. We can make excuses for it or we can fight about it or we can ignore poverty altogether, but as long as it's here it will always be a betrayal of the ideals we hold as Americans. It's not who we are.

Drawing on the campaign of Robert Kennedy seems to be the popular thing to do these days. A cynical man might point out that Obama's speech was given on the same day former Senator Edwards was wrapping up  a poverty tour meant to draw parallels with the Kennedy campaign of 1968. However, it should be noted that if poverty has become the cause of Edwards' life, that certainly has always been the case for Obama as well, as he mentions in his speech by hearkening back to his days as an organizer:

This kind of poverty is not an issue I just discovered for the purposes of a campaign, it is the cause that led me to a life of public service almost twenty-five years ago.

I was just two years out of college when I first moved to the South Side of Chicago to become a community organizer. I was hired by a group of churches that were trying to deal with steel plant closures that had devastated the surrounding neighborhoods. Everywhere you looked, businesses were boarded up and schools were crumbling and teenagers were standing aimlessly on street corners, without jobs and without hope.

The first sentence of that quote could possibly be interpreted as a "subtle jab" at the Edwards campaign, though Jonathon Prince and Joe Trippi did not seem to see it that way.

In any case, Obama used this part of the speech to draw on his personal experience with the issue. Such experience is invaluable, and was obviously designed to lend credibility to the proposals made later in the speech:

What's most overwhelming about urban poverty is that it's so difficult to escape - it's isolating and it's everywhere. If you are an African-American child unlucky enough to be born into one of these neighborhoods, you are most likely to start life hungry or malnourished. You are less likely to start with a father in your household, and if he is there, there's a fifty-fifty chance that he never finished high school and the same chance he doesn't have a job. Your school isn't likely to have the right books or the best teachers. You're more likely to encounter gang-activities than after-school activities. And if you can't find a job because the most successful businessman in your neighborhood is a drug dealer, you're more likely to join that gang yourself. Opportunity is scarce, role models are few, and there is little contact with the normalcy of life outside those streets.

What you learn when you spend your time in these neighborhoods trying to solve these problems is that there are no easy solutions and no perfect arguments. And you come to understand that for the last four decades, both ends of the political spectrum have been talking past one another.

With his description of the litany and complexity of problems facing the urban poor, and his acknowledgment that there are no "easy solutions" or "perfect arguments," Obama is clearly setting himself up for major proposals and sweeping reform. Before doing so, however, he drew on the lessons learned from the war on poverty. In doing so, did something that often frustrates many here: he acknowledged the past failures in policy from liberals and conservatives:

It's true that there were many effective programs that emerged from Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. But there were also some ineffective programs that were defended anyway, as well as an inability of some on the left to acknowledge that the problems of absent fathers or persistent crime were indeed problems that needed to be addressed.

The right has often seized on these failings as proof that the government can't and shouldn't do a thing about poverty - that it is a result of individual moral failings and cultural pathologies and so we should just sit back and let these cities fend for themselves. And so Ronald Reagan launched his assault on welfare queens, and George Bush spent the last six years slashing programs to combat poverty, and job training, and substance abuse, and child abuse.

Well we know that's not the answer. When you're in these neighborhoods, you can see what a difference it makes to have a government that cares. You can see what a free lunch program does for a hungry child. You can see what a little extra money from an earned income tax credit does for a family that's struggling. You can see what prenatal care does for the health of a mother and a newborn. So don't tell me there's no role for government in lifting up our cities.

In referring to the failures of programs of the War on Poverty, Obama is likely talking about the job training and education programs that failed to have a substantial impact on employment possibilities for the populations they servhttp://www.mydd.com/submit/Diary
MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politicsed, as well as the inefficiencies associated with the welfare programs which were improved, albeit only slightly and certainly inadequately, by the Earned Income Tax Credit expansion and welfare reform of the 1990s. The successes of the War on Poverty he refers to should be obvious: Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start, and Legal Aid were all programs born out of the Johnson-era social policy reforms. It is important to be honest about the successes and failures of past measures if we are to improve upon the work that has gone on in the past 40 years.

However, Obama notably saved his sharpest criticism for Ronald Reagan, the Republicans, and the Charles Murray school of social policy disastrously advocated by Republicans since the rise of Reagan. He again draws on his personal experiences in combating urban poverty to discredit such a laissez faire attitude toward to the nation's poor, and also brings up popular and unassailable (except maybe to the most radical of right-wing ideologues) government programs to provide an example of how the war on poverty has helped American families and, importantly, children. By acknowledging past failures of the left along with his attacks on the right, Obama is introducing the Dr. King philosophy of "both-and" that has become a central theme of his campaign:

So there are no easy answers and perfect arguments. As Dr. King said, it is not either-or, it is both-and. Hope is not found in any single ideology - an insistence on doing the same thing with the same result year after year.

From there, Obama moved on to describe some of the work he did in Chicago using the "both-and" approach, and tout recent examples of innovative urban poverty programs that have found success.

Obama Urban Poverty Plan Area 1: Children's Services

If you're a child who's born in the Harlem Children's Zone, you start life differently than other inner-city children. Your parents probably went to what they call " Baby College", a place where they received counseling on how to care for newborns and what to expect in those first months. You start school right away, because there's early childhood education. When your parents are at work, you have a safe place to play and learn, because there's child care, and after school programs, even in the summer. There are innovative charter schools to attend. There's free medical services that offer care when you're sick and preventive services to stay healthy. There's affordable, good food available so you're not malnourished. There are job counselors and financial counselors. There's technology training and crime prevention.

You don't just sign up for this program, you're actively recruited for it, because the idea is that if everyone is involved, and no one slips through the cracks, then you really can change an entire community. Geoffrey Canada, the program's inspirational, innovative founder, put it best - instead of helping some kids beat the odds, the Harlem Children's Zone is actually changing the odds altogether.

Obama argued that such a program should be replicated on a national scale in order to serve the children of America living in poverty. This represents the first point of his urban poverty plan:

It's time to change the odds for neighborhoods all across America. And that's why when I'm President, the first part of my plan to combat urban poverty will be to replicate the Harlem Children's Zone in twenty cities across the country. We'll train staff, we'll have them draw up detailed plans with attainable goals, and the federal government will provide half of the funding for each city, with the rest coming from philanthropies and businesses.

Now, how much will this cost? I'll be honest - it can't be done on the cheap. It will cost a few billion dollars a year. We won't just spend the money because we can - every step these cities take will be evaluated, and if certain plans or programs aren't working, we will stop them and try something else

But we will find the money to do this because we can't afford not to. Dr. King once remarked that if we can find the money to put a man on the moon, then we can find the money to put a man on his own two feet. There's no reason we should be spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to imprison one of these kids when they turn eighteen when we could be spending $3,500 to turn their lives around with this program. And to really put it in perspective, think of it this way. The Harlem Children's Zone is saving a generation of children for $46 million a year. That's about what the war in Iraq costs American taxpayers every four hours.

Such a program would be a massive undertaking. Senator Obama is talking about increasing funding and introducing new programs in prenatal care, early childhood education (preschool), child care, after school activities, K-12 education, medical services, nutrition, employment, and policing. This is an extremely ambitious plan, and it's quite surprising that it has gone relatively unnoticed on the progressive blogosphere.

It is also important to note the way Obama offers stark choices to quell the kinds of attacks such a sweeping plan is sure to incite from right-wing commentators. Obama points out that spending $3,500 when a child is young will in the long run save thousands of dollars a year if that same child can be saved from doing time in prison. He also points out that the Harlem program costs in a year what the Iraq War costs in a day. This is a brilliant way of framing the issue, and has been a common point of reference for Democratic candidates since the 2006 midterms.

Obama Urban Poverty Plan Area 2: Parental Support

The second area of the proposal also channels the both-and attitude of partnership characteristic of Obama. These proposals are aimed at strengthening resources offered to parents struggling to raise their children, complimenting the programs offered directly to the children themselves as proposed in Area 1:

I'll pass the plan I outlined last year that will provide more financial support to fathers who make the responsible choice to help raise their children and crack down on the fathers who don't. And we'll help new mothers with their new responsibilities by expanding a pioneering program known as the Nurse-Family Partnership that offers home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income mothers and mothers-to-be.

This program has been proven to reduce childhood injuries, unintended pregnancies, and the use of welfare and food stamps. It's increased father involvement, women's employment, and children's school readiness. It's produced more than $28,000 in net savings for every high-risk family enrolled in the program. It works, and I'll expand the program to 570,000 first-time mothers each year.

Such plans to aid parents embody the family-based style of progressivism Obama Policy Director Karen Kornbluh has written about. Such progressivism forms the rhetorical base for the Obama campaign.

Obama Urban Poverty Plan Area 3: Helping People Find Work, and Making Work Pay

Obama plans to introduce programs offering community service jobs as transitional employment opportunities. He explained the plan and the rationale behind it as follows:

I will invest $1 billion over five years in innovative transitional jobs programs that have been highly successful at placing the unemployed into temporary jobs and then training them for permanent ones. People in these programs get the chance to work in a community service-type job, earn a paycheck every week, and learn the skills they need for gainful employment. And by leaving with references and a resume, often times they find that employment.

Having worked with urban poverty his entire career, Obama recognizes the problems associated with dead-end jobs. Such jobs kill the incentive to work, part of the reason many young men earn money by joining gangs and selling drugs, leaving communities mired in a cycle of poverty. Obama plans to create training programs to avoid such pitfalls:

Still, even for those workers who do find a permanent job, many times there's no way for them to advance their careers once they're in those jobs. That's why we'll also work with community organizations and businesses to create career pathways that provide workers with the additional skills and training they need to earn more money. And we'll make sure that public transportation is both available and affordable for low-income workers, because no one should be denied work in this country because they can't get there.

In addition, Obama calls for a tripling of the Earned Income Tax Credit, an issue he's familiar with from his work in the Illinois State Senate. While more difficult to understand than the minimum wage, it is perhaps an even better tool for lifting people out of poverty (though these two should certainly be employed together in the "both-and" model).

To make work pay, I will also triple the Earned Income Tax Credit for full-time workers making the minimum wage. This is one of the most successful anti-poverty programs in history and lifts nearly 5 million Americans out of poverty every year. I was able to expand this program when I was a state Senator in Illinois, and as President I'll do it again.

Obama Urban Poverty Plan Area 4: Bringing Businesses back to inner-cities

Obama also recognizes the importance of economic development to the health of urban areas and the battle to overcome urban poverty. In a proposal to fund business development in inner cities, he makes an interesting comparison with the World Bank:

A long time ago, this country created a World Bank that has helped spur economic development in some of the world's poorest regions. I think it's about time we had something like that right here in America. Less than one percent of the $250 billion in venture capital that's invested each year goes to minority businesses that are trying to breathe life into our cities. This has to change.
When I'm President, I'll make sure that every community has the access to the capital and resources it needs to create a stronger business climate by providing more loans to small businesses and setting up the financial institutions that can help get them started. I'll also create a national network of business incubators, which are local services that help first-time business owners design their business plans, find the best location, and receive expert advice on how to run their businesses whenever they need it. And I will take steps to help close the digital divide and increase internet access for cities so that urban America is just as connected as the rest of America.

He also talks of bridging the digital divide, an issue that could perhaps be uniquely embraced by the netroots community.

Obama Urban Poverty Plan Area 5: Access to Safe, Affordable Housing

Obviously, housing is an issue fundamental to overcoming problems of poverty. Obama's plan recognizes the essential nature of housing by offering more mixed-income housing as well as cracking down on housing practices that have prevented low-income urban Americans from breaking out of poverty:

As President, I'll create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that would add as many as 112,000 new affordable units in mixed income neighborhoods. We'll also do more to protect homeowners from mortgage fraud and subprime lending by passing my plan to provide counseling to tenants, homeowners, and other consumers so they get the advice and guidance they need before buying a house and support if they get in to trouble down the road. And we will crack down on mortgage professionals found guilty of fraud by increasing enforcement and creating new criminal penalties.

Obama also promises to appoint a director of Urban Policy to "cut through the disorganized bureaucracy that currently exists and report directly to me on how these efforts are going; on what's working and what's not." Clearly, Obama values performance and evaluation and is looking to ensure his programs avoid the fate of many of the efforts undertaken in prior decades.

Obama concludes his speech by returning to the question of morality central to the Kennedy campaign: "How can a country like this allow it?" Once again, he answers with two words:

"We can't."

The concluding remarks of the speech further channel Kennedy, but also recall the signature proposals he has just issued and turn a hopeful eye toward the promise the future could bring:

The idea for the Harlem Children's Zone began with a list. It was a waiting list that Geoffrey Canada kept of all the children who couldn't get into his program back when it was just a few blocks wide. It was 500 people long. And one day he looked at that list and thought, why shouldn't those 500 kids get the same chance in life as the 500 who were already in the program? Why not expand it to include those 500? Why not 5000? Why not?

And that, of course, is the final question about poverty in America. It's the hopeful one that Bobby Kennedy was also famous for asking. Why not? It leaves the cynics without an answer, and it calls on the rest of us to get to work. I will be doing exactly that from the first day I become your President, and I ask you all to join me in getting it done. Thank you.