This is the last Bill Clinton at Netroots Nation '09 footage I'll be posting -- and it's below the fold in deference to our dial-up readers. I think Clinton is exactly right about the importance of passing health care reform, and about the effects of that reform. Ditto for climate change. I hope he is correct that we are on the brink of a revolution in our public life, an age where we engage in honest debate and seek win-win solutions instead of winning at someone else's expense. Keep hoping and keep working - we'll get there someday.
First up are Clinton's extremely timely remarks about the health care reform bill:
The third problem that the President has was best articulated by Nikolai Machiavelli in the 15th century when he said there is nothing so difficult in all of human affairs as to change the established order of things, because -- I'll switch now to Clinton's 21st Century jargon -- because the people who have got it are certain of what they're going to lose and the people who will gain are uncertain of their advance.
If we spend 16% of GDP on health care and Canada spends 11 and all our other major competitors are between 9.5 and 10, that means we're spotting all our competitors 750 to 800 billion dollars a year. If we insure 84% and they all insure 100, where is the money going? Follow the money. ... That's what the President and the Congress are facing. ... What should you do about it?
If you don't think their plan is good enough it's fine for you to advocate a public option, I personally favor a public option, and I always have. I also favored some way of letting people who are uninsured buy into the federal plan because there are 36 different options and young single people who want a more catastrophic type coverage so they wouldn't pass their cost onto anybody else would have an even less costly option there.
...
The worst thing of all and the most danger to the most people is sticking with the status quo. It is bankrupting America, making families insecure ... The second thing I think you have to do is to figure the 3 or 4 things that 100% of the people who are going to vote for this agree on has to be in the bill and the 3 or 4 things that none of us want in the bill, that we're all being accused of. ...
Then you can say whatever you want about -- here's what's wrong with the Senate plan, here's what's wrong with the House plan. Whatever you believe is fine. Trying to hold the progressives' feet to the fire is fine. Trying to get the best bill you can is fine.
But first we have to win the big argument. The worst thing to do is nothing. Here are the things that everybody wants, here are the things that nobody wants. Then, here are your differences. If you can do that you can reach millions and millions and millions of people ...
The President needs your help and the cause needs your help. This is really important. There's just one other thing I'd like to say that I wish many of you would write. It is not only the morally right thing to do, it is politically imperative for the Democrats to pass a health care bill now. Because one thing we know and that I've lived through is that if you get out there and then you don't prevail, the victors get to rewrite history.
I'm telling you, I don't care how low they drive support for this with misinformation, the minute the President signs the Health Care Reform Bill, approval will go up because Americans are inherently optimistic. Secondly, within a year, within a year, when all those bad things they say are going to happen, don't happen, and the good things do begin to happen, approval will explode. ... We can't let people lose their nerve, so I am pleading with you. It's ok with me if you want to keep everybody honest. If I say something you don't agree with on health care, by all means criticize me but try to keep this thing in the lane of getting something done. We need to pass the bill and move this thing forward.
Then climate change legislation:
I feel the same way about climate change. ... Again I say, the President stuck his neck out here, the Congress has stuck it's neck out and we've got to have a bill. ... There are a lot of practical things that need to be advanced before we can get there. ... This Cash for Clunkers program has worked great. ... We ought to put that on steroids when we can sell electric cars ... The biggest thing we can do to help the President economically and help our country economically is to concentrate on the least sexy part of the climate change debate: efficiency.
The problem is there is no parallel financing for clean energy in America. ... Let's take some taxpayer money and create a small business guarantee fund like the one for the SBA and have 10 times as much retrofitting done. That's the kind of thing you need to think about.
Darcy Burner narrowly lost to the WA04 seat to incumbent Congressman Dave Reichert in both 2006 and 2008 and is now the Executive Director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. She gave the closing keynote at Netroots Nation 2009 Saturday evening. Despite it's brevity, it was a barn burner. Italics below are Darcy's words.
We're called to build a world in which the basic promises on which this country was founded are finally realized. The idea that every person is created equal. We're called to be a beacon for the rest of the world for the idea that government of the people, by the people and for the people is the only way to fulfill humankind's destiny. We have been called to take our country back and now it is finally time for us to take it forward.
...
We can't rely on people in authority to make everything right. We have got to do the hard work of governing. It's our job as Americans, it's our obligation.
...
We have to help the people we elected.
...
The message I get from [Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus] consistently is "we are doing everything in our power to make a difference but we have to have the support of the grassroots, we need the grassroots helping to frame the message, we need the grassroots to apply pressure."
...
Much to the surprise of the Blue Dogs and people like Max Baucus, we are in fact winning. So there's an enormous amount of work to do ... the single biggest competitive advantage progressives in Congress have is sitting right here tonight.
...
Destroying our allies is the surest way to lose and we cannot afford to lose. We owe it to this country to win. We've been called to do the hard work of governing. We need to get to the point, right now, of being ready to leave it all on the field.
I know there's been a lot of talk about health care reform. I don't know if it's been conveyed how critical this battle is. This is about a whole lot more than just health care. This is about precedent, about the direction of the country. This is quite frankly about the soul of our country. That's a lesson the Tea Baggers already know. They know that if they can defeat this we will not be able to take the country in the direction that it ought to be going. If we lose this battle, we will have virtually no chance of winning anything from here on out.
So I'm going to ask you today to take out everything you've got. If you can blog about it -- which most of you can -- please do. If you have the ability to make viral videos, if you have the ability to frame, if you can write letters to the editor or get people to write letters to the editor, if you can get people to show up at town hall meetings, if you can come up with ideas that I haven't thought of that you think are going to have an impact on this debate, do it now! Find your courage. Dust yourself off and go into battle now. We have been called and it's time to get to work.
More video from Bill Clinton's speech to Netroots Nation 2009 last Thursday is below the fold. He starts out talking about the new political environment in America -- communitarian and aware that we all succeed or fail together. A few minutes into the speech he is interrupted by someone protesting his Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy on gays in the military -- which he then addresses. Clinton finishes up with why the health care debate is fundamentally different in 2009 than it was in 1993 and why he thinks the Republicans are making a big mistake on the health care debate. A partial transcript follows with President Clinton's remarks in italics.
Everybody knows that one major significance of President Obama's election is that he's the first African American president and for people of a certain age, like me, who are Southerners, that's a very big deal. It lifts an awful burden of history off our president, it enables every parent in America to tell every child, not just every African American child 'you can live up to your God-given potential.'
...
This is the first presidential election to occur in a country that is self-consciously communitarian. That is not always more liberal on the issues but understanding that we are going to rise and fall together. We don't have time for these phony divisions anymore. We don't have time to major in the minors anymore. We don't have time to pretend that we don't need to care what other countries think of us anymore. We are too diverse, racially, religiously and in every other way.
...
Unless immigration slows to nothing, the United States will have no majority race by 2050 ...
Do we need a second party that's vital? We do. The Republicans are making a terrible mistake sitting around just waiting for the President to mess up. Now as a Democrat it suits me fine. But the truth is we need an honest, principled debate on all these complex issues ...
At this point Clinton was interrupted by shouts about his DADT policy. He joked that the shouter needed to go to one of those health care meetings and offered to talk about DADT if the person would be quiet.
I'll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn't deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military and the media supported them -- they raised all kinds of devilment -- and all most of you did was to attack me instead of giving me some support in the Congress. ... You may have noticed that Presidents aren't dictators.
...
Public opinion now is more strongly in our favor than it was 16 years ago. ... This is a different world.
Clinton said Gen. Colin Powell defined DADT much differently than it was eventually enforced, but that turned out to be a fraud. He said "nobody regrets how this was implemented any more than I do. ... I hated what happened, but I didn't have any choice if I wanted any progress to be made at all."
He also discussed DOMA and said it was an attempt to head off a Constitutional Amendment being sent to the states. "I didn't like signing DOMA. ... I think we're going forward in the right direction now ..."
America has rapidly moved to a different place on many of these issues. ... Right now the Republicans are sitting around rooting for the President to fail as nearly as I can figure. One of the reasons so hysterical at all these health care town hall meetings, and they've been stirred up like they have, is they know they have no chance to beat health care this time unless they can mortify with rigid fears, some moderate and conservative Democrats. Why do they know that? Because they don't have the filibuster this time.
...
This time there is no 45 Senators, there is nor filibuster option, and there is no option here but to terrify people.
Bill Clinton's speech last night was worth waiting for -- especially this brief lesson on recent political history and a prognostication.
We have entered a new era of progressive politics which, if we do it right, could last 30 to 40 years.
Speaking of 1966 election:
Republicans developed in that election a message that exploited the resentments and exploited the fears and exploited the divisions.
...
President Nixon, who was actually Communist compared to most people who came after him. ... He believed in affirmative action, he signed the bill creating hte Environmental Protection Agency, he still thought arithmetic mattered when you put budgets together, went to China, you know. But they were really good at dividing people and building on resentments, the silent majority and all that. Which was a racial code signal, really.
And they rocked along with that until President Reagan came along with his unique contribution to this. Reagan could tell a story like nobody and he convinced people that government could screw up a two car parade. And then he convinced them that 2 and 2 was 4 everywhere in the wide world except in Washington D.C. where arithmetic didn't matter anymore. And trickle down economics was actually good for poor people, and middle class people. And with those two strings, the cultural division and the corporate economics they managed to triple the government debt in twelve years while incomes continued to drop for middle class people.
...
Speaking of 1966 through 2000:
In this whole period the Republicans had a base vote of about 45% and ours was about 40%, which should tell you all you need to know about why we didn't win the White House very often. ...
All national elections are determined by three things: the underlying political culture, the conditions of the time and the quality of the candidates.
...
America was changing, we were growing more diverse. We were moving away from being a biracial nation to being a multiracial, multicultural, multireligious more oriented psychologically to communitarian solutions.
On the 2000 election:
Compassionate conservatism was a brilliant slogan. ... But then, after he won, he ran into the old adage that life's greatest curse can be answered prayers, because for the first time since President Nixon was elected in 1968 and President Reagan added to their message in 1980 election, the American people got to see what would happen if they could do what they had been talking about all this time . And they didn't like it very much.
After the 2006 midterm elections:
I told Hillary the morning after the 2006 election "If we don't nominate a convicted felon we're going to win in 2008. And there's nothing they can do about it."
America is a different place today. We don't have time for these divisions over race, gender, sexual orientation or anything else. We know we live in an interdependent country in an interdependent world.
(Second Life.... might have to check it out. Particularly if my "first life" gets too annoying! - promoted by countrycat)
This week our friends at Democracy For America are announcing another round of winners for their Netroots Nation scholarship contest. If you weren't on the list of winners and you can't find the money/time/energy to get to Pittsburgh August 13 to 16 for the convention, don't despair...there is another way!
For the third year in a row we'll be taking advantage of the rich multimedia capabilities of Second Life to bring you live streaming audio and video from Netroots Nation right to your own computer monitor. Through Second Life we're able to bring you not only streaming video, but also real time discussion and participation in the panels from the comfort of your own home, exclusive online panels and information displays from nonprofit organizations, online retailers and great progressive companies. Oh, and did we mention it's free?
Join us over the fold and we'll walk you through the particulars of how to participate and how to support our work with sponsorships.
T.H.E. Social Work Agency Adoption home studies & care management services in the North Alabama area.
Licensed, certified, caring social workers. blog advertising is good for you
