This is more important than reelection...

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For the first time since election night, I'm genuinely hopeful. Not only was the speech a robust and potent defense of the absolute need for complete health care reform, it was also an impassioned defense of liberalism itself, the idea that government, good, honest, and competent government can fill in the holes left by the private sector and the 'free market and provide a robust safety for the commons in a civil society. Of course, what happens next is what really matters. It could still go to hell in a hand-basket. But if but for one night, I have faith that President Obama may have remembered that doing his job is more important than keeping his job. We'll see...

Scott Mendelson