ryking:

“In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, “I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program…” There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: “All of you know we might not get there immediately 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.”

This sort of gotcha line, utterly excerpted from its context is flatly ridiculous and, frankly, right out of the GOP playbook. Certainly has the ring of straight up PUMA-style astroturfing. Either way, it’s the typical, feckless DCCC circular firing squad stuff that the very same people screaming about it all claim to hate so much.

But wasn’t this Obama’s position? Didn’t he say it? Yes he did. Frequently. But it also matters what he always said next:

‘If you’re starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense. But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that’s not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they’ve known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.’

He’s always said it that way during the campaign and after winning the election. I’ve never once heard him say it otherwise, or even with a particularly different wording. I’m quite sure if I could dig up the full text of the specific speech above, he said something like it then too. At any rate, here’s Obama directly addressing this quote back during the campaign. Notice what he says?

I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process. I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out.

Hey, what do you know. That’s pretty much the way things are going. Start somewhere. Make improvements for 40 million uninsured in this country. Come back and fix the rest later. Move forward on the main substance.

It’s almost as if Obama campaigned on several issues, like focusing on the war in Afghanistan, improving health insurance, and, in sharp contrast to the Bush administration, actually bothering to hunt for bin Laden and shut down the various operational al Qaeda training facilities in various far-flung corners of the world (yes, even if that means putting a missile into Yemen). Now that he’s actually, you know, doing those things, various segments of the democratic party are shocked, shocked, and retiring to the nearest fainting couch or agitating that these things be undone. If you really feel this way, methinks you thought you were voting for Kucinich. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but, honestly. What did you expect?

By all means, keep parroting the right-wing’s nonsense. Keep acting like poorly informed reactionaries. Just what they’re hoping for.