Bill Clinton at the DNC

Kari Chisholm FacebookTwitterWebsite

Wow. What a stellar performance from President Clinton - the "wonk in chief" as Ezra Klein dubbed him:

“People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets,” former President Bill Clinton said on Wednesday night. “What new ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic.”

Ezra cites a Clinton stanza on Medicaid:

Now, folks, this is serious, because it gets worse. And you won’t be laughing when I finish telling you this. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming 10 years. Of course, that’s going to really hurt a lot of poor kids.

But that’s not all. A lot of folks don’t know it, but nearly two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors who are eligible for Medicaid. It’s going to end Medicare as we know it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities, including a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down’s syndrome or autism or other severe conditions.

And, honestly, just think about it. If that happens, I don’t know what those families are going to do. So I know what I’m going to do: I’m going to do everything I can to see that it doesn’t happen. We can’t let it happen. We can’t.

What did you think of the case that Clinton made for President Obama?

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    I'm far from a Bill Clinton fan, but he gave a great speech. I believe it will be reflected in a substantial post-convention polling bump.

    As Clinton spoke, I imagined Mitt Romney, dressed as the Wicked West of the West, melting away on stage.

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    Alex Castellanos, GOP strategist, summed up the reaction of the Republicans to the speech quite nicely:

    I would recommend to my friend Paul [Begala] here, tonight when everybody leaves, lock the doors. You don't have to come back tomorrow. This convention is done. This will be the moment that probably reelected Barack Obama.

    An overstatement, to be sure. But yeah.

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      I do not trust Castellanos. I think he was trying to drive a wedge between Obama and Clinton by praising Clinton so much and implying that we don't need Obama i.e putting Obama down. I do not think I'm paranoid about this but just realistic about Republican shenaningans.

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