Unlike that dark day of January, when for a moment just duplicating the Senate bill or passing a new bill through reconciliation seemed like an unlikely best hope, the strategy that emerged of the House passing the Senate bill and fixing it in reconciliation has brought us to the very brink of victory. My Representative supports it so at this point I’m just making a few donations for the final push.
Speaker Pelosi had been my last hope and according to Carrie Budoff Brown and Glenn Thrush in Politico, my faith was vindicated (article via @brianbeutler). This isn’t to say there’s been no mistakes, or even no unforced errors, but by God they’re trying and that’s all I can ask. I’d been worried by the initial summary of Obama’s summit strategy but it appears my assessment after being calmed by friends was correct and the tactic worked. I have to say, I had been disappointed by some of Obama’s choices, but he has re-earned my faith and based on his actions and speeches like the one below has led me to believe he’s found his footing on domestic issues in a way he hadn’t even back during the campaign.
Here’s the text of his speech via Ezra Klein (video from @ebertchicago). I’ll just quote the excerpt I put in the post title:
I have the great pleasure of having a really nice library at the White House. And I was tooling through some of the writings of some previous Presidents and I came upon this quote by Abraham Lincoln: “I am not bound to win, but I’m bound to be true. I’m not bound to succeed, but I’m bound to live up to what light I have.”
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Thank you leaders, that’s all I can ask for.
If you’re looking for where to follow the news tomorrow, Twitter is actually very useful for this purpose I find, my top sources: @brianbeutler, @fivethirtyeight, @jeffreyyoung_hc, @jcohntnr, and @ezraklein are the ones to watch.
[As a final note, I do strongly believe that if we win here, as the President says, good policy is good politics. Dana Milbank does a good job of summarizing why. Given the economy, we’re likely to take some losses in 2010, but the voters will fight to protect the right to health care once they’ve had the chance to enjoy it.]
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