David Plouffe to OFA Volunteers: “The path may be more difficult now, but we’re going to get this done.”
Before the President's speech last night, Obama for America campaign manager David Plouffe spoke on a conference call with OFA supporters about where we’re at and what’s up next. Here are some highlights from the call:
On the fight for health reform:
You've done great work. Over a couple million of you have taken action on health care, we've had hundreds of thousands of people on single days call Congress, you've held thousands of press events, you guys were all over the town hall meetings throughout August. You've done great work, and without that, I think that health reform would be absolutely dead on arrival.
I'm here to tell you tonight, and the President is gonna say it, that we are still going to get health care done. So for all of you that got involved in the campaign because you believed in that issue, all of you that worked hard, obviously we've had a little bit of a hiccup here, but presidents have tried to do this for a hundred years. The President is going to make clear tonight that health care is a jobs issue. We are not going to have a strong economy without it. We are not going to have a strong country unless people have the guarantee of coverage, unless we rein in insurance industry abuses. The path may be more difficult now, but we're going to get this done.
On the 2010 midterm elections:
[2010] is an election year, and I think many of you indicated that you'd like to get involved in local elections... A lot of campaigns historically have not had great grassroots organizations, we can help fix that, or at least make it better. We have over 15 million people who voted for the first time in 2008, many of you on the phone probably fit in that category, and a lot of these people have never voted in an off-year election... We gotta go out there and talk to these first time voters. You clearly indicated an interest to do that, and we'll be working with you to make sure we facilitate that. A lot of you helped register a lot of voters, and it was a big part of why we won. We directly registered over 5 million voters as a campaign, there's tens of millions out there eligible to vote in these states in 2010 who aren't registered, so that's another reason.
And on changing Washington:
What's going on here is a belief that, well, everybody in America is having to make some sacrifices and change the way they do their business, but Washington really hasn't changed. There's still too much special interest influence, there's not enough transparency, there's a lack of trust. Barack Obama ran to try and change Washington. He can't do it alone, but that fight, that he's delivered a lot of things on, needs to continue... This town is not working for the American people. I know that Democrats control Congress, but the fact of the matter is not enough change has come and we've gotta have more change come.
You can also listen to the full call below: