Sunday promises to be a particularly historic day for the United States: it’ll be the day when health care reform passes the House and goes onto for battles in the Senate or it goes down in flames. And it promises to be a turning point day — one way or another — for President Barack Obama, who has put his personal political capital on the line in an era where politics is personalized more than ever.
If it passes the House, Obama will be judged by many to have helped engineer a historical achievement, no matter what happens later in the Senate. If it dies and is not passed, he will be considered by many to have been politically disemboweled. Earlier today Obama put more of his political capital squarely on the line — by going to the House and making a final pitch to Democrats to pass health care reform in a speech that quoted from Abraham Lincoln. Here’s the video of his speech so you can judge his pitch for yourself minus any editorializing in this post:
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.