Obama speech preview
Commenter “artfldgr” has kindly provided a link to some excerpts from Obama’s speech tonight.
Based on those, we have the following points:
(1) Obama asserts that we are facing a tremendous crisis—Cloward-Piven, anyone? Obama says that we’re at “a breaking point” because of lack of health care insurance.
(2) Action must happen now (actually, this is similar to #1).
(3) He offers still another reiteration of the fact that if you have private health insurance now, you won’t lose it. It will only get better. But he doesn’t answer critics who offer reasons why this is unlikely to be so.
(4) For the uninsured, there will be an insurance exchange. This particular exchange is a nebulous, poorly-explained, and poorly understood entity in terms of how it would actually work. But I am willing to bet that it won’t work—as opposed to what President Obama will be suggesting in his speech—the way it works for members of Congress.
(5) He’s in a fighting, truculent mood—and as usual, Obama personalizes this. Opposition won’t be tolerated, the great and powerful Obama has spoken:
I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out. And I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.
Obama doesn’t offer specifics on what he’ll do to stop them, either—except for the trash-talky threat to “call them out.” Oooo, I bet they’re shaking in their shoes over that.
(6) If this isn’t passed, doom will be our collective lot. And Obama appears to believe that all he has to do is state this as a fact to have us believe it:
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.
We hold these truths to be self-evident—except that they’re not. Of course, it’s technically true that “our deficit will grow” if we do nothing—thanks to Obama. But even the CBO has said that, if the present health care plan is passed, it will make the deficit grow even more. I can’t quite imagine that whatever changes Obama might be promoting this evening will change that fact. And businesses? The taxes that will be placed on them and others to finance Obamacare (and which—at least as far as the excerpts go—Obama never mentions in his speech) will have a greater chilling effect on businesses than non-passage of the bill would.
But my favorite piece of demagoguery is Obama’s assertion that “more will die” if this bill isn’t passed. Talk about scare tactics!
Somehow, I don’t think the American people will buy it. But whether Congress will is another question.
Really, my thoughts about that snot-nosed punk are no longer printable.
The phrase “bully pulpit” comes to mind, but not in the sense that Teddy Roosevelt used it.
Obama goes to the center or goes to the bunker. So the bunker it is. Not that I’m surprised.
The interesting thing is that Obama is not only doubling down on his health care position, he is doubling down on himself as the The Anointed One who can say, “Make it so,” and thus it comes into being.
Risking the latter may be more dangerous to Obama than the former.
Obama is playing for high stakes. Conceivably he could sweep up all the marbles; he could also lose everything.
If low taxes, dogged determination to live, and praying for miracles, isn’t a good enough health plan for everyone, then what is?
The shine is off of the One. Accusations of his ill preparedness to be president weren’t just picky insults.
So far, so good for Obama — thus far he is selling it.
Getting ambiguous with his point-by-point wording… how are those words defined?
Now Obama is slagging everyone who disagrees with him.
This is red meat for his base, but who is persuaded to change their position?
Now the Big Lie: Nothing will change for you if you like your insurance. Repeated twice.
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close.
So there’s the strategy. Crash the economy, and blame it on lack of health care reform.
Obama knows that his health care bill is deader than dog food, so he’s trying to wring some benefit from its demise: the deficit will grow, families will go bankrupt, and businesses will close in any case, thanks to his policies, so he might as well lay those problems off on the failure of his bill(s).
What a crappy, juvenile speech. His speechwriter really does sound 27 years old…..
If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out.
Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing….. more will die as a result (of our do-nothing, nothing-doing, apparently). We know these things to be true.
Such utter, utter bullshit. No, we do not “know these things to be true”.
The whole thing was just stunning in it’s complete misrepresentation of the opposition and pie-in-the-sky promises.
He built a straw man and beat the shit out of it in front of congress, engaged in some scare-tactics and doom-mongering and then beat up his opponents for using scare-tactics and doom-mongering.
I’m calling you out, Obama.
Of course Nyomythus:
So far, so good for Obama – thus far he is selling it.
You gigantic ass: are you just obtuse or are you smoking the hopium. Snap out of it man! It’s concentrated pablum with a chaser of ill-will. I know you aren’t this stupid.
If low taxes, dogged determination to live, and praying for miracles, isn’t a good enough health plan for everyone, then what is?
Well, shit; it sure beats high taxes, self-slaughter and existential angst.
If we don’t pass his bill, the deficit will go up. WTF?
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My favorite moment of the crappy speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp4owvUFY1g
And have some unionized healthcare:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574400571702189240.html
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nyom wrote, “So far, so good for Obama – thus far he is selling it.”
Yep. And remember the experience Obama sold you on. He ran his own campaign! He ran something. You sell easily…