Dear President Obama,
I voted for you in November, 2008. I don’t apologize for being a big fan of your style, intelligence, and your dedication to being a good President. A lot of people, including some in my own family, think I’ve lost my mind or gone over to the “Dark Side” because I support you most of the time.
You have a particular talent as a public speaker. I won’t offer any advice to you on how you might improve your delivery, pronunciation, enunciation, or other presentational skills. 
I personally think that you are the best public speaker to live in the White House since President Ronald Reagan. Reagan had some professional training as an actor and TV host. I think your skill comes from the heart.
Let’s face the facts. If you had managed your presidential campaign like you have the Office of the President, you’d still be a junior Senator from Illinois. Hillary Clinton would probably be president this term – or, heaven forbid, John McCain. We’d all have remembered you only as “that good-looking young African-American fellow from Chicago that ran for President, but lost the primaries to John Edwards.”
Where is the fire in your belly? What happened to your insistence on sticking to the facts? Why won’t you immediately counter-punch whenever someone goes on Fox News and tells a bald-faced lie? When Representative Stupak comes out and says that the new Senate version of the healthcare bill “allows federal money to pay for abortions” – make him prove it.
Don’t just make a sissified statement like, “I’m sure that the Congressman is sincere in his beliefs, but we don’t want to hold up healthcare for the majority of Americans.” Make Stupak quote the chapter and verse in the Senate bill that supports his statement. Don’t avoid the issue to keep from hurting his feelings, attack the falsehood! Make him prove the facts of his statements!
It’s already been proven numerous times by several TV, radio, and newspaper commentators, House Leader Nancy Pelosi, and other prominent House and Senate leaders that the new bill specifically does not include any allowance for payments for abortions using federal money. However, a fair majority of American voters DO BELIEVE what Stupak is asserting. Why? It’s because you’ve avoided calling him out on the issue. You’ve lost the battle before it started because you refuse to shoot back or defuse the bomb that Stupak has dropped on healthcare reform.
All this does is to make voters like me, who have continued to support you all this time, wonder if your hands are also in the pockets of the big insurance cartel. If not, why won’t you speak up – loud and clear?
Instead of appealing for the support of the vast majority of people who voted for you and supported your plans to reform government, provide universal healthcare, and bring the war in Iraq to a close — you’ve been in Washington negotiating with special interest groups and wasting your time trying to appease the Republicans in Congress. They have made no secret that they despise you and have vowed to oppose you at every turn. Your choosing to ignore them has put the brakes on all the momentum you had when you were elected our President. By trying to be “Mr. Nice Guy” you’re barely treading water at this stage of your first term.
Well-funded opponents of health reform continue to gain ground by convincing the American middle-class that your plan is a false choice: Keep the healthcare plans they have now, or gamble on “Obama’s government takeover of healthcare with his socialist ideals and lose everything.”
You’re losing the battle because you’re still wasting your time trying to appeal to members of the Republican Party who hate you. Quit trying to be friends with the enemy. The truth is that they will not play your game and they don’t play fair. They don’t give a damn about America’s middle or low-income classes, only the insurance companies and their lobbyists who are financing their next election. You must take control and directly confront their cynicism and deceptions. Don’t be afraid to call them out on their lies and ties to the insurance industry, Mr. President.
If roles were reversed and the Republicans were still in power, do you think they would be playing nice with a minority of Democrats? Well? Did they play nice during the Bush Administration? How many bills did they pass using “Reconciliation” in the Senate?
Mr. President – you must explain clearly and forthrightly that a financially secure future for middle-class families, and for the entire nation, depends on reforming the entire health care industry and finding ways to control its runaway costs before it bankrupts the country and each and every individual.
It’s ironic that middle-class families have the most to lose if healthcare reform fails to pass. The problem is that most of them have yet to realize that fact. You’ve got to impress upon them what personal and financial pain they have to look forward to if you fail in your quest for universal, low-cost healthcare.
Without reform, it has been estimated that in ten years premiums for the average family’s health insurance coverage will cost nearly $25,000 per annum, and that’s based on current low inflationary rates. According to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund, rates could reach as high as $30,000, pricing all but the wealthiest families completely out of the health insurance market. With costs that high, most medium and small businesses will be unable to afford to contribute anything toward subsidized health insurance plans for their employees.
The very rich can afford the best available health care with or without private or public insurance. Unfortunately, the American middle class, even those who are comfortable with their present insurance coverage, could soon find themselves under-insured or unable to get any affordable insurance coverage.
Your Republican and Fox News opponents are buying hundreds of daily sound bites accusing your program of being “socialized medicine” and allowing a “government takeover” of the “best healthcare system in the world!” They accuse you of wanting to set up “death panels” and using government bureaucrats to deny quality healthcare to the elderly and the sickest among us. They present this as a future probability under your plan, while at this very moment insurance companies are doing this every day in every state to every class of patient. Insurance companies are already making decisions about patients’ health care with only one objective: increasing insurance company profits.
I hate to admit it, but the Republican Party and Fox News’ decision to promote lies and half-truths are working – and continue to destroy your standing with American voters in all parts of the country. Why? Because so far you’ve refused to take a stand for truth and justice for middle-class and average working families. So far you have done far too little to effectively counter those charges. I sometimes wonder if you really care. Is your heart really in the fight?
Mr. President – now is the time to speak out forcefully against the liars and propagandists in and out of the political arena. Make it clear that simply because they wrap an American flag around their shoulders and carry a King James Bible in their hands, that does not make everything your opponents say “The Truth.” They have to realize that it’s not just for the maintenance of your political reputation that you should come out and force the truth to be told. After all, healthcare reform is for the benefit of those very same Bible-thumping, flag-waving, tea-bagging Republicans – and for the rest of us who depend on affordable access to doctors, clinics, and hospitals when the need arises.
If your healthcare reform programs fail, it will be the middle-class and low-income families, the very people who tend to believe most of the Republican Party’s lies, who will ultimately pay the highest price for the least amount of healthcare.
Help them. Help us all. Fight for us, Mr. President!
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Wow. I’ve been wondering how I felt about this whole political thing, and why I just didn’t care anymore. You told me, as well as the President, just who the enemy is, and what needs to be done to counteract the lies. I’m tired of progressives, liberals for those who think it is a dirty word, turning over and presenting their soft undersides to the ravenous beasts of the Right; accepting defeat without putting up a fight. I’m disappointed in Obama. I thought he had courage. Maybe he, like so many before him, have too many advisers pulling him in different directions. The buck stops on YOUR desk, Mr. President. Pick it up and play your best, and most honest hand, because you’re probably going to be a one term president if you don’t.