Exclusive: Ex-Convict Bob Creamer Laid Out Health Care Reform Plan In 2008 Speech

by Kyle Olson

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ACORNcracked.com recently obtained an audio recording a speech by Robert Creamer, given at the Take Back America 2008 conference in Washington, DC, that was hosted by Campaign for America’s Future, an ultra-liberal organization.

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In a March 19 session entitled, “Health Care: The Politics of Winning,” ex-convict Creamer and husband of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), laid out his vision for health care reform.  Of Creamer’s 10-point plan, number 5 is:

To have a movement that both deals with that fact [that health care reform should be personal] and creates a movement we have to have two elements.  In a lot of campaigns we run are either about a populist kind of message and feel because it’s about people’s pocketbooks and needs directly.  Or it has a moral dimension that is inspirational and empowering – the civil rights movement, for instance.

This movement needs to have both.  To have a movement, to mobilize people, to inspire people, you have to appeal to their sense of meaning and purpose and something important.  So we have to create a sense that this is a historic battle. This is about you’re being part of something that will make you meaningful. (emphasis added)

If there is a legitimate crisis, does the “sense” really need to be “created?”  Or are Creamer, Healthcare for America Now, SEIU, ACORN and others creating a problem to suit meet their ends?  Then he talked about the campaign and how to defeat their opponents.

We have to spend a lot of time particularly now, in this next year, going after our principle adversary here: the private insurance industry. … We need to reduce the credibility of the private insurance industry as, I mean, let’s be honest, right?  Twenty five percent of America’s health care costs go to administration and advertising.  …  This is a political campaign.  We need to bring down the positives and bring up the negatives of our opponents.  And the private insurance industry is our opponent in this battle. (emphasis added)

In analyzing the defeat of HillaryCare in 1993, Creamer identified then opponents then and ways to make them allies now.  He specifically mentioned major businesses with huge legacy costs (ie. General Motors), small businesses, and the American Medical Association.

To win any major social change in America that restructures a sixth of the economy, we need some Republican support.  We need it in Congress and we certainly need it in the population.  Now, that doesn’t mean we say we have to negotiate with these guys, it means, you know, we want the train to be as long as possible, we just want the progressive vision to be in the engine here.  So we’ve got to beat the crap out of the Susan – well, if Susan Collins loses, that’s wonderful – but some of the swing votes in the Senate in particular to get them with the program. So part of our targeting has to be not just on holding Democrats with us, although that’s a problem for us, it’s also – we gotta have some of those Republicans. (emphasis added)

Creamer then suggested that liberals need to devise ways to draw conservatives into the debate.

We need to really go at their alternative but we need to establish that they have an alternative.  We need to establish as the political dialog, “everyone agrees there’s a health care crisis in America.  Here’s our plan, here’s their plan.  Now your only alternatives, public, are to choose one of the two, not the status quo.

Using language similar to SEIU president Andy Stern, Creamer articulated what is at stake:

If we get the presidency, we must deliver.  And if we do, we will create the investment of huge numbers of Americans in a revitalized commitment to the importance of the public sector and the progressive vision for the future.

Prior to Creamer’s remarks, pollster Celinda Lake gave her analysis of poll-tested phraseology that will best sell socialized medicine to an already skeptical, pro-capitalism American public.  A PowerPoint presentation, created by Lake for a similar meeting, can be seen below:


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Let’s be clear: the need for health care reform (assuming for a moment there actually is a need), is seen in battle terms by liberals in power.  They need it.  They salivate for it.  It’s something they must deliver for their base and their biggest campaign contributors.

Pro-free market conservatives are dealing with an issue bigger than simple health care reform.  They’re dealing with a liberal movement hell-bent on securing a victory and delivering the bacon to the interest groups that can return them to power next year.


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Posted Dec 8th 2009 at 12:57 pm in Big Labor, Culture, Exclusives, Healthcare, Justice/Legal, News, Obama, Politics | 57 Comments