Obama Urges House Dems: “This Is It. This Is The Moment.”

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/obama-urges-house-dems-to-consider-history-this-is-it-this-is-the-moment/

Obama Urges House Dems: “This Is It. This Is The Moment.”


In today’s closed-door caucus meeting, President Obama urged House Dems to grasp the magnitude of the historical moment, telling them they were on the cusp of an achievement as momentous as Social Security and Medicare, a House Dem who was there tells me.

“He said, `This is it. This is the moment,’” Dem Rep. Jan Schakowsky said in an interview.

Standing behind a podium as many members snapped pictures on their cell phones, Obama urged members to look beyond self-interested political concerns.

“He asked people who are worried about what’s happening back home to remember why we came to public service,” Schakowsky recounted. “He said, `It is a privilege to be able to do this for the American people.’ He used that word.”

“This is a Medicare moment; this is a Social Security moment,” is how Schakowsky described Obama’s message, adding that he noted that both those programs were greeted by scary language about socialism and the end of capitalism. “But these are the moments people are so proud to have been part of.”

To illustrate the point, Obama singled out Dem Rep. John Dingell, who held the gavel during the passage of Medicare, earning Dingell a standing ovation.

Separately, Sam Stein reports that Obama delved into the politics a bit by pointing out that Republicans would continue to attack Dems no matter which way they voted. Schakowsky adds that he told them Dems are all in this together.

It was only a matter of time before Obama — whose election was itself a world-historical event — stepped in to play the role of historical conscience, and to urge nervous Dems preoccupied by parochial politics and GOP attack lines to think big and bold.

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Update: One other interesting tidbit: Obama didn’t mention anything about the current standoff over abortion, the anti-abortion amendment going into the bill, or what comes next on that front, Schakowsky says.

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/04/obama_and_the_reawakening_of_c.html

In which case, what was a "historical" event really wasn't. Candidate Obama promised lots of change and while there's been some tokenism, bringing in the folks who helped create the mess is either naive, ignorant, or complicit. Please correct me where I'm wrong, but with all the talk of single payer in 2003 and other things that have tighty-righties claiming he's a "socialist", somebody is wrong somewhere regarding some accusation of what he is or isn't. And all I know is, I'm not the only one who's wrong.

as shorthand for 'Obama=Nazi."

See his other handiwork:

http://www.powells.com/review/2005_06_09.html

It's hard to summarize the argument in Steven Malanga's book, The New New Left: How American Politics Works Today because it doesn't really have one. Instead of an explanation of "How American Politics Works Today," Malanga launches a series of broadsides against anyone and everyone foolish or venal enough to interfere with the "magic of the market." This includes: living wage campaigners; university labor studies programs; anti-Wal-Mart activists; writers such as Barbara Ehrenreich and David K Shipler, who write about the working poor; urban development guru Richard Florida; New York City's Working Families Party; the New York City Council; and Malanga's favorite bugaboo, public employee unions who are the "eight-hundred-pound gorillas of policy debates in statehouses and city councils." To Malanga civil servants are simply "tax-eaters," on the wrong side of the defining political battle of our times between "those who benefit from an expanding government and those who must pay for it..."

point somewhere, just as there had to be when Medicare was first realized, and this could be it.

I'm not going to complain but will hope something even better comes from these initial steps. I need insurance with no pre-existing conditions considered, so that in itself makes me hopeful.

And what talk of single payer in 2003? It must not have been very loud.

You do realize how long it took Canada to get universal health care, don't you? It didn't burst into the world whole like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. It took decades after Saskatchewan got the ball rolling. The same goes for any struggle against entrenched moneyed interests, including the Civil Rights movement, the Feminist movement, the Abortion Rights movement, and any other worthy cause you care to name that rich old men hated.

Would I like more? Sure. Who wouldn't? Considering how much power the right-wing nutbars have, though, I don't think we're doing bad at all. Hell, considering we're starting from fucking zero, we're moving at plaid speed.

Mind you, I don't think OUR doomsayers are being dishonest or trolling. I just think that many of them are frustrated due to being in tough positions in their own lives with respect to health care and finances. That's a damn tough place to be in, and anger is a proper reaction. For people to be in these kind of straits in a modern "civilized" country with modern technology is a crime. I just want us to try to put these things into a larger context before unfairly branding the good guys as a bunch of corporatist pig-dogs.

Giving Health Care to American people is a wonderful THANKSGIVING present.

self promotion.

..... than when he's throwing out the red meat to his "people." I hate that we weren't able to hear it.