A good article from Sirota with lots of evidence. This is my favorite:
Listening to a 2003 Obama speech, it's hard to believe he has become such an enigma. Back then, he declared himself "a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program" -- that is, one eliminating private insurers and their overhead costs by having government finance healthcare. Obama’s position was as controversial then as it is today -- which is to say, controversial among political elites, but not among the general public. ABC's 2003 poll showed almost two-thirds of Americans desiring a single-payer system "run by the government and financed by taxpayers," just as CBS's 2009 poll shows roughly the same percentage today.
In that speech six years ago, Obama said the only reason single-payer proponents should tolerate delay is "because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
Yeah, that old line. A little shop-worn by now, I would say.
Sure, politics is the art of the possible. But after a year of being told that Obama by the Obama campaign and many, many others that Obama was a transformative figure -- and I don't know how "change" and "hope" could signal transformation any more clearly* --- it's a little hard to understand why the transformative mountain has labored so hard to bring forth such a mouse. Eh? Sirota asks the same question, but in a much more civil way.
NOTE * The nature of the change being left, as many others pointed out at the time, unspecified.
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I think
DS should provide some context for that speech.
2003 was also the year that
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Most significant, universal healthcare became merely a policy goal instead of state policy - the proposed commission, renamed the Adequate Health Care Task Force, was charged only with studying how to expand healthcare access. In the same amendment, Obama also sought to give insurers a voice in how the task force developed its plan.
Lobbyists praised Obama for taking the insurance industry's concerns into consideration.
"Barack is a very reasonable person who clearly recognized the various roles involved in the healthcare system," said Phil Lackman, a lobbyist for insurance agents and brokers. Obama "understood our concern that we didn't want a predetermined outcome."
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This took place over 2003-2004 and of course, in 2004, Obama ran for IL-Sen.
I don't understand why people haven't caught on yet ... /tapping foot.
Actually, the context is there
Read on. DS gives the context.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Is it?
I see what you're referring to, but I'm wondering about the audience. Potential donors to the 2004 race? Doctors at UChicago?
Obama has always sold himself as a conciliator, which basically means selling out liberal/progressive interests. It goes back to his tenure at Harvard Law Review, where he packed the editorial positions with conservatives. Clearly, it's worked out quite well for him.
Got a link on the editorial board packing?
Sounds interesting.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
"the whole Federalist slate was taking over"
Frontline show 'Dreams of Obama' which you can find here.
From the transcript:
NARRATOR: Brad Berenson was a member of the conservative Federalist Society. One day, he and his associates would help run the Bush administration.
BRADFORD BERENSON: The conservatives on the Harvard Law School campus at that time were severely outnumbered.
NARRATOR: Inside that toxic environment, Obama's affinity for the Federalist students surprised his black associates.
CHRISTINE SPURELL: But I don't know why at the time he was able to communicate so well with them, even spend social time with them, which was not something I would ever have done. I don't think he was agenda-driven. I think he genuinely thought, "Some of these guys are nice, all of them are smart, some of them are funny, all of them have something to say."
NARRATOR: No African-American had ever been president of The Law Review. In his second year, Obama decided to run for it.
BRADFORD BERENSON: If being on The Law Review is a great credential and a high honor, being the president of it is the greatest credential and the greatest honor.
LIZA MUNDY: The voting for the presidency was an all-day process in which- it started out in the day with a lot of candidates, and they got basically voted off the island as the- as the day progressed.
KENNETH MACK: One of my most poignant memories of The Law Review election process was late in the process, it's late at night, we're trying to figure out how to resolve this thing. Clearly, Barack has a lot of support, but it's not resolved yet. And a conservative editor, who probably disagreed with just about everything that Barack stood for, got up and said that he was firmly behind Barack because we were a divided institution, this was the best person to lead the institution and to reach out to all constituencies, even though he had his own political views and made them known.
NARRATOR: Just after midnight, he won. It was national news.
BARACK OBAMA, Pres., Harvard Law Review: Though I'm honored I think people can say that my election symbolizes some progress at least within the small confines of the legal community, I think it's real important to keep the focus on the broader world out there and see that for a lot of kids, the doors that have been opened to me aren't opened to them.
NARRATOR: The African-American editors were ecstatic.
BRADFORD BERENSON: I think a lot of the minority editors on The Review expected him to use his discretion to the maximum extent possible to empower them.
CASSANDRA BUTTS: There was an expectation on the part of his more progressive colleagues at The Law Review that he would side with them on issues.
BRADFORD BERENSON: Barack was reluctant to do that. It's not that he was out of sympathy with their views, but his first and foremost goal, it always seemed to me, was to put out a first rate publication. And he was not going to let politics or ideology get in the way of doing that.
NARRATOR: Only one African-American student received a top editor's job. Federalist Society members were given three.
CHRISTINE SPURELL: The whole Federalist slate was taking over. I was kind of hoping to get a masthead position, and I did not get a masthead position. I was hurt. I think I would call it very hurt. And I told him so. I mean, certainly, he was aware of how I felt.
Classiic
And Cassandra Butts is now Deputy White House counsel.
It does seem like a classic maneuver, though. Preach reconciliation, take the top job, empower the right, throw the left a bone. Chilly as a spreadsheeet, as I've said.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
I thought the opening of Sirota's Salon
piece was the most important part of it (with my bold added):
Why, indeed.
Yes, I saw that part
and I liked the way Sirota framed it: "If they can give it up now, why were they trying to take it in the first place?"
But I thought it was important to get it on the record that Obama was, at one point, a single payer supporter, with the quote, which I didn't know. Puts the whole thing in the context of FISA, torture, military tribunals, where the talk was talked, but the walk was not walked.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
obviously, you don't read me enough!
:)
Oh, no :-) and here's why
June 2008, June 2008... What else was happening then... Can't read and remember everything!
You know what we ought to do? Shrink that YouTube by half, and wrap text around it so it's right at the top of every single payer post that we right from here on in.
This is gold. Let's use it!
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
june 2008
weren't we in the middle of some big assassination plans or something?
i like the video-in-the-single-payer-posts idea, can you, in your copious amounts of spare time, write a script that automatically puts it into any post tagged single payer? i noticed that dkos has something that automatically adds grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! a link to seiu's website to anything that's about healthcare [which is how i found that seiu page about the $2500].
not that i mind shrinking it and adding it in myself each time i post though [well, adding all those p tags to use full html is a bit of a pain].
Not easily
But what I can do is allow the OBJECT and EMBED tags into normal tagging. That will make the P stuff go away. Let me see about that.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
cool
works for me.
Of course, BHIP* immediately walked back that offer, if there
really was one made which matched what Obama et al described.
Show us the letter, BO!
*BHIP--Big Health Industry Playahs
Obama is and was a liar.
What more needs to be said?
History is written by the winners. If the winner is a crooked, then history will be crooked.
Whatever it takes to convince the boneheads among us.
(By "us" I do not mean Corrente.)
JFK has been shot, we miss him a lot
He always knew what to do
-- Philly Cream