“Rendering Obama’s First Year An Unambiguous Failure” – With Video
Jan 14, 2010 2 Comments ›› Erik Wong
Organizing for America is blasting this video out to its Massachusetts list, recorded by the president on Martha Coakley’s behalf.
Obama frames it with a recognition of the incredibly high national stakes: “It’s clear now that the outcome of these and other fights will probably rest on one vote in the U.S. Senate,” he said, referring to battles over health care, financial reform, and climate change. “That’s why what happens Tuesday in Massachusetts is so important.”
Coakley, he says, will be “your voice and my ally.” Brown, who goes unnamed, is backed by “opponents of change.”
It’s worth pausing to consider how enormously high, in political and substantive terms, the stakes really are. If Brown wins, there’s a strong chance that health care legislation collapses, leaving the status quo in place in that industry and rendering the central initiative of Obama’s first year an unambiguous failure. Coakley’s victory will still, at this point, be a kind of a warning shot, but would ensure passage of a bill on which Obama has staked a lot.
