“That Was the Rollout of the Republican Campaign in November”

The truth is… that was the rollout of the Republican campaign in November…. that is what they will do. They will try to focus on all these issues that don’t have anything to do with how you are paying your bills at the end of the month…. And there’s no doubt that I will have to respond, sharply and crisply — and then pivot to, what are we going to do about the economy and what are we going to do on the war in Iraq?

Barack’s response actually isn’t quite so sharp or crisp in the clip here, but that’s why there’s a silver lining in this line of attacks coming up in April rather than August or October — he’ll have plenty of time to practice his ripostes.

Greg Sargent at the TPM blog-hydra noted something important in writing about another portion of the same Obama response to last night’s debacle on ABC:

One thing Obama has been very adept at doing: When he takes a political hit, he neutralizes it by decrying it as the very sort of negative politicking he’s trying to rise above.

In this case, he did this by describing the debate as "precisely why I’m running for president — to change that kind of politics."

The truth is a bit deeper than that. My particular fetish focus in writing about a Democratic political narrative for the past couple of years has been how to make solving political problems into proof of a candidate’s moral character, rather than something separate from it (as Village denizens like George Stephanopoulous are claiming in defending the banality of the questions during the debate).

The choice Obama needs to put before the electorate is that they can keep deciding elections on who they’d rather have a beer with, who sighs less often, or who wears a flag lapel pin… or they can decide based on who’s going to help them in the real issues that affect their lives. In his remarks today, Obama is showing that he knows how to make that necessary connection.

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3. Democrats “Win” 2008 So Republican Can Write Health Care Bill
4. Republican Health Care Politics and Right Wing Thuggery
5. Didn’t We Just Have a National Referendum on Obama’s Health Care Plan Last November?