Everyone’s Holding Hands For Health Reform; DNC is Holding Out Its Hand

Just as we were enjoying President Obama’s unflagging effort to promote health reform as a collaborative, hand-holding effort drawing from both sides of the political aisle, we received this fund-raising email from the Democratic National Committee.

In an effort to drum up the same contagious enthusiasm and grassroots networking that sustained the Obama campaign, the DNC, over the president’s signature, sounded the alarm on health care reform, blasting an email to millions of supporters today asking them to “donate whatever you can” to the “campaign for real health care reform.”

“Today, spiraling health care costs are pushing our families and businesses to the brink of ruin, while millions of Americans go without the care they desperately need,” Obama wrote to the masses. “Fixing this broken system will be enormously difficult. But we can succeed.”

Using the now familiar we will prove them wrong tone, Obama called health reform the “biggest test of our movement” since the election, stressing that opposition will be “fierce.” The public call to arms comes one day after Obama spoke at the American Medical Association in an effort to warm doctors to an overhaul to the health care system (covered here in The Pink Sheet).

“To prevail, we must once more build a coast-to-coast operation ready to knock on doors, deploy volunteers, get out the facts, and show the world how real change happens in America.”

A link to make a donation brings recipients to “Organizing for America,” a web project of the DNC that bears the web address barackobama.com.

“It doesn't matter how much you can give, as long as you give what you can.” Obama wrote. “Millions of families on the brink are counting on us to do just that. I know we can deliver.”

Will Obama’s second effort to mobilize the masses pay off?

– Lauren Smith

image from flickr user plamoe used under a creative commons license