Colorado Progressive

Some campaign promises are big and rhetorical, while some campaign promises are intimate and very specific. In the first group fall the compulsory issues candidates have to weigh in on: balancing budgets, reducing crime, improving schools, etc. Today, President Obama addressed the second group of campaign promises when speaking with House Democrats in advance of tomorrow’s big vote.

Every single one of you at some point before you arrived in Congress and after you arrived in Congress have met constituents with heart-breaking stories. And you’ve looked them in the eye and you’ve said, we’re going to do something about it — that’s why I want to go to Congress.

. . . Every single one of you have made that promise not just to your constituents but to yourself. And this is the time to make true on that promise.

The president, I think, spoke to the kernel of idealism that once took root in every hardened incumbent before he or she ever served in public office. It’s one thing to wax poetic about the historic proportions of the bill that’s scheduled for an up or down vote tomorrow on the House floor,  and Obama did plenty of that, to be sure. But the president balanced ambitious political cheerleading with an appeal to the most intimate type of promise a campaigning politician makes to a constituent, and then Obama balanced that again with an appeal to each representative’s conscience.

I know this is a tough vote. I’ve talked to many of you individually. And I have to say that if you honestly believe in your heart of hearts, in your conscience, that this is not an improvement over the status quo; if despite all the information that’s out there that says that without serious reform efforts like this one people’s premiums are going to double over the next five or 10 years, that folks are going to keep on getting letters from their insurance companies saying that their premium just went up 40 or 50 percent; if you think that somehow it’s okay that we have millions of hardworking Americans who can’t get health care and that it’s all right, it’s acceptable, in the wealthiest nation on Earth that there are children with chronic illnesses that can’t get the care that they need — if you think that the system is working for ordinary Americans rather than the insurance companies, then you should vote no on this bill. If you can honestly say that, then you shouldn’t support it. You’re here to represent your constituencies and if you think your constituencies honestly wouldn’t be helped, you shouldn’t vote for this.

The president also stated flat out “Now, I can’t guarantee that this is good politics.” And he singled out Betsy Markey and John Boccieri as representatives who have looked at this measure from every angle and evaluated the politics as well as the policy and decided to vote with the majority caucus in favor of reform. Betsy Markey may well be a one-term representative. I hope it’s not so, but Colorado’s 4th District may in fact be more comfortable with Markey’s predecessor, archconservative culture warrior Marilyn Musgrave, than with Markey. But Markey also gets what this bill is about, and she gets it that she can’t vote no on this bill and then come home to her district with her head held high.

In the end, the president had to reach the people for whom a yes vote tomorrow really won’t be good politics and convince them (or effectively remind them) that voting yes is the right thing to do, even if every political survival bone in their bodies is screaming and shaking to vote no. This has been his agenda for the past week, culminating in his trip to the Hill today. We’ll know tomorrow whether he’s succeeded or not.