I liked that he drew parallels between the present health care reform effort and the passage of Social Security and Medicare. In each case, the opposition derided it as socialism, and in each case the programs passed, were exceedingly popular, and became a foundation for greater prosperity for all.
Overall, I think he laid out his case pretty well. He made dollars-and-cents arguments as well as moral arguments. He called out the Right for some of its nonsense in the debate but still reached out to Republicans in Congress.
After this speech, it's hard for me to picture the reform effort all going down in flames and ruining Obama's presidency, as Republicans have been hoping. Some kind of health insurance reform will pass Congress. There will at least be some new common-sense regulations on insurance companies. The question is what else will make it in the final bill and how far-reaching the reform will be.
3 comments:
I was very proud of him tonight. I think he was smart, reasonable, great at going through the points and I also liked the comparisons to Social Security and Medicare. I hope and pray that we will have reform.
We only saw the last twenty minutes of it, but I cried when he talked about Ted Kennedy.
I am so so so glad that he went the "moral route" in his argument. I've been saying all along that this is a deeply moral issue and it needs to be framed as thus.
While I think he could have gone farther, it was nice to see that the gloves were starting to come off a little and that he wasn't just holding himself "above the fray" as he has so far this summer. In my opinion, he now needs to really play behind the scenes hardball. The speech was great, and framed the fight, but now he's actually got to do the fighting.
Although it was a great speech, I think it's pretty evident that he/dems are giving up on insisting on a public option--the most significant part of health insurance reform. We could've had it if the dems had more brains and a little backbone, but in the end he/they decided that bipartisanship is more important than health care access and affordability for millions of Americans. If we can't get serious reform now, when? A great speech doesn't make up for this missed chance. Oh yeah, the "card check" for the EFCA is off the table too from what I can tell.
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