Here is a great article from Jon Favreau, someone who knows President Obama quite well, having been his speech writer since 2005 when President Obama first entered the Senate. Go read it all, here are my favorite parts…
The warnings of those advisers turned out to be true. On the day Scott Brown won an upset victory in the special election to fill the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy, it appeared that the chances for reform had died along with history’s most passionate health-care champion. Obama’s advisers told him that the votes in Congress were no longer there, and that unless he was willing to cut his losses and accept a drastically scaled-back version of his health-care proposal—perhaps a small expansion of coverage for children or a few watered-down consumer protections—the political fallout could cost him reelection. And what the president said next is why so many of us chose to work for him in the first place:
“What are we here for? Did we come here to just put our approval ratings up on a shelf and admire them? Or are we here to try to make a difference—to actually start solving some of the problems we’ve talked about for so long?”
Barely two months after the press wrote countless obituaries for the Affordable Care Act, Democrats in Congress showed genuine political courage by voting it into law.
Now is the time to show that courage again.
[…]
But the president should never apologize for passing the Affordable Care Act, and neither should those of us who have supported this kind of reform for years, even decades. We didn’t fight for this law because it was good politics. We didn’t fight for this law with the hope that it would lead to some ideological victory for big government—otherwise we wouldn’t have proposed a plan that maintained the private insurance market with reforms that Republicans once championed.
We fought for this law because no other advanced democracy on Earth gave insurance companies free rein to profit by discriminating against all but the healthiest and wealthiest citizens. We fought for this law because 14,000 Americans, most of them working and middle class, were losing their health insurance every day—with no other options. We fought for this law because millions of other Americans thought they had decent coverage until their insurance company refused to pay for treatment that someone in their family desperately needed; because people died as a direct result of not being able to afford better health care.
The reason we fought so hard for this law—the reason Obama is willing to stake his entire legacy on making it work—is because so many of us have had a personal experience with the fear and vulnerability that comes with being sick.
Extreme Liberal's Blog 
Unlike Democrats who fell in behind George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D Act and COOPERATED to make it work, the Republicans have been pure obstructionists. And don’t forget the push back from the courts. Have heard some complain that Obama had over three years to develop the Affordable Care Act which he signed on March 23, 2010. But immediately the right-wing started filing lawsuits and it wasn’t until June 28, 2012 when the Supreme Court deemed the law was Constitutional and work to put it into effect could begin (with funding cuts pushed by GOP in Congress). Even now the Hobby Lobby/Mardel stores owned by religious conservatives in Oklahoma, have filed a lawsuit over their having to cover contraception that may go on to the Supreme Court. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that corporations can hold religious beliefs (just like people)—and therefore can sue to defend them.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/why-the-gop-could-win-on-contraception-20131118
BTW, the 10th Court has 11 Republican appointed justices and 9 Democratic with two vacant seats which GOP won’t consent Obama appointments. It has jurisdiction over Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado, some of the nation’s most conservative states.
I can’t believe the teabaggers in Washington are calling the President and Sen. Harry Reid “bullies”, “dictators” for making the Senate COMPLY with the Constitution where 51% is the MAJORITY instead of 60%. And I thought the REICH were the big keepers of strict Constitutional language.
Yeah, it definitely did take courage not to listen to his spine-free advisers. Obama should have done that a hell of a lot more often.
Then again, how much courage does really it take to get what’s basically a 1990’s Republican health plan passed into law when you have majorities in both House & Senate? Not that much. Real courage might have passed a single-payer plan. Decent courage could have passed a plan with a public option. Marginal courage meant not listening to your completely sackless, surrender monkey, advisers.
Perhaps the real problem is that the Democrats’ “high-bar” for courage is lower than the Republicans’ “low-bar”. The Republicans just keep getting bolder and more ideologically pure, while the Democrats keep getting wussier and move toward wherever the Republicans were 15 years ago.
Democrats have a permanent rearguard-action strategy that ultimately can’t win anything…except the odd election. But that’s all that matters to strategists, power for the sake of power, not power for the purposes of doing something positive with it.
The “Nuclear Option” should have been employed early on in 2009 when it was first revealed that Republicans would obstruct EVERYTHING President Obama had campaigned for and which many Americans evidently have supported in both 2008 and 2012 by giving the popular vote majority to Barack Obama. We might have had single payer now becoming a reality if not for the filibuster being abused by the right-wing. I too have been questioning the advisers around President Obama. First, wasn’t anyone hearing the clamor over the NUMBER ONE problem in 2009 being a lack of JOBS, not healthcare? I fear Obama was looking too much at his “legacy” (wasn’t being the first black president a good start? Now possibly his legacy may not be what he wants written in future history books. Maybe the Tea Party wouldn’t have established such a strong political base by 2010 if unemployment hadn’t given them a populist rebellious platform. Couldn’t Obamacare have waited a bit longer? It isn’t going into effect anyway until midway into his second term. Pumped up hatred of Obamacare and the screaming of “socialism” took off right away in 2009 and what did we get?…..a GOP takeover of Congress in 2010 and a majority of states seating extreme right-wing Republican governors and legislatures. These deep red states went right to work negating social issue achievements like a woman’s right to choose health and family options. The worst acts of these red states included gerrymandering and placing new restrictions on voting rights to ensure that Republicans can lose the popular vote (which they have) yet end up with a majority power in Congress.
Never could understand Democrats seemingly losing the communications battle to the reich-wing. Of course 90% of talk radio, Fox (and sometimes even the rest of the MSM) promotes the Tea Party line. Democrats seemingly have the majority of Hollywood and credible journalists on their side so why isn’t liberal messaging getting out. Our economy keeps getting better. Wall Street has recovered and now surpassing old records. Just heard on TV that Black Friday sales this year are better than years before, yet too many Americans believe our nation is going to hell in a hand-basket. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/complainers-wreck-economy-125802931.html
uh-huh.