Obama health care speech reaction

An energised and passionate President Obama delivered his speech to a joint session of Congress. Will it be enough?

The complexities of US healthcare policy are sometimes mind-bending to outsiders, but if students follow this story closely then they will find that much of the content to be covered later on in the American Politics course will make so much more sense.

Last night we saw Obama deliver a rousing speech that carried echoes of the campaign and was a distant cry from the plodding technical discussions he has on the issue in a series of town meetings. In this sense it was much more successful, but how much harm he has done to his cause by so openly criticising congressional Republicans remains to be seen. To lash out at your political rivals for acting in a partisan fashion may smack of partisanship itself. Voters are repelled by politicians that harp on about the failings of their opponents and the Republicans may exploit this.

As far as the Democrats are concerned, liberals in the party broadly accept that dropping the public option is necessary to get some sort of bill passed, and something is better than nothing. Conservatives, particularly the Blue Dogs in the House, with half an eye on re-election next autumn continue to be unimpressed.

So will the speech be enough? He has probably done enough to placate moderate Republicans worried about the government plan by taking it off the table, and the speech may swing public opinion back in favour of reform and give it sufficient momentum to convince the Senate that they can get something out of (the Finance) committee. This would then mean that the House would broadly accept this more moderate version of reform.

Failure on this may not completely derail his presidency but it is certainly a high roller’s gambit.

But something is sure to pass, and it should make a real difference to a sufficient number of Americans to be claimed a success.

The BBC website has some great coverage on this. And if that’s not enough, you can gauge the reaction of the Washington Post team here.

I’ll say it again. This is a major story and paying close attention will pay dividends in the long run.