“The short-term strategy is, win the House of Representatives,” stated the former president, garnering applause. “Because that’s going to be the circuit breaker that will give us control of one major component of the federal government. With that as a bulwark, we’re now able to block some of the worst impulses that are coming out of this White House.”
The former president laid out a two-pronged strategy for Democrats: to reclaim a House majority next year, and to work on honing the party’s messaging in the coming years.
“Long term, let’s tell a story, a better story about who we are as Americans and what we share,” Obama said, according to excerpts shared with CBS News. “We have to tell the story that makes people who feel outside that process, we’ve got to bring them back in.”
He had the opportunity to give everyone universal health care and instead he chose to give us the half-baked “solution” that is utterly dependent on republican good will while also driving up health insurance profits, leaving us more reliant on middlemen insurance companies than ever before.
So yeah, people are hurting without it, but don’t pretend like it was some nice gift. It was a token that was tossed our way so we wouldn’t ask for more.
Obama had the opportunity to “give us universal health care”? When?
It was Congress that killed the public option btw.
Both things are true. It was obviously a gift to the insurance industry, but it doesn’t mean that it didn’t help millions of people.
For a solid chunk of time in Obama’s first term the Dems controlled all branches of government but did not pass any of the progressive legislation that he campaigned on, like universal healthcare.
I acknowledge that it helped millions of people, but that doesn’t mean that the ACA wasn’t a rug pull on the American people as a whole in the long run.
Wasn’t Ted Kennedy dying and Joe Leiberman (I) ,who normally caucused with Democrats, went across the aisle and sided with republicans.