Quotes of the Day: Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention

My favorite quotes from Bill Clinton’s speech last night nominating Barack Obama for re-election. The quotes are as delivered, which is not necessarily as prepared, given that the Big Dog doesn’t always stick to the script.

CLINTON: I want to nominate a man whose own life has known its fair share of adversity and uncertainty.

CLINTON: …this Republican narrative, this alternative universe…

CLINTON: We believe that “We’re all in this together” is a far better philosophy than “You’re on your own.”

CLINTON: Since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats, 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private sector jobs. So what’s the job score? Republicans, 24 million. Democrats, 42.

CLINTON: As the Senate Republican leader said, in a remarkable moment of candor, two full years before the election, their number one priority was not to put America back to work. It was to put the president out of work.

CLINTON: In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president’s re-election was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy. It went something like this. “We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.”

CLINTON: In order to look like an acceptable, reasonable, moderate alternative to President Obama, they just didn’t so very much about the ideas they’ve offered over the last two years. They couldn’t. ‘Cause they want to go back to the same old policies that got us in trouble in the first place. They want to cut taxes for high income Americans, even more than President Bush did. They want to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts. They want to actually increase defense spending over a decade two trillion dollars more than the Pentagon has requested, without saying what they’ll spend it on. And they want to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor children. As another president once said, “There they go again.”

CLINTON: Everybody’s forgotten. When President Barack Obama took office, the economy was in free-fall, it had just shrunk nine full percent of GDP, we were losing 750,000 a month.

CLINTON: Here’s another job score. President Obama, 4 and a half million. Congressional Republicans, zee-ro.

CLINTON: Now we all know that Governor Romney opposed the plan to save GM and Chrysler. So, here’s another job score. Are you listening in Michigan and Ohio and across the country? Here’s another job score. Obama, 250,000. Romney, zee-ro.

CLINTON: Both Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly “robbing Medicare” of 716 billion dollars….Look, here’s what really happened….There were no cuts to benefits at all – none. What the president did was, to save money by taking the recommendations of a commission of professionals to cut unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that were not making people healthier and were not necessary to get the providers to provide the service. And instead of raiding Medicare, he used the savings to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program. And — you all got to listen carefully to this, this is really important — and add eight years to the life of the Medicare trust fund so it is solvent till 2024. So President Obama and the Democrats didn’t weaken Medicare, they strengthened Medicare.

Now, when Congressman Ryan looked into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as “the biggest, coldest power play” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, because that 716 billion dollars is exactly, to the dollar, the same amount of Medicare savings that he has in his own budget. You got to give one thing. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did….

Now, at least on this issue — on this one issue — Governor Romney has been consistent. He attacked President Obama, too, but he actually wants to repeal those savings and give the money back to the insurance company. He wants to go back to the old system, which means we’ll re-open the donut hole and force seniors to pay more on drugs, and we’ll reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by eight full years. So, if he’s elected, and if he does what he’s promised to do, Medicare will now go broke in 2016. Think about that. That means, after all, we won’t have to wait until their voucher program kicks in in 2023 to see the end of Medicare as we know it. They’re gonna do it to us sooner than we thought.

CLINTON [on the Republican lies]: A lot of people believe this stuff.

CLINTON: Their campaign pollster said “We are not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Now, finally I can say, that is true.

CLINTON: When we vote in this election we’ll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a winner-take-all, you’re on your own society, you should support the Republican ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility, a we’re-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. If you want every American to vote and you think it is wrong to change voting procedures just to reduce the turnout of younger, poorer, minority and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama. If you think the President was right to open the doors of American opportunity to all those young immigrants brought to America when they were young so they can serve in the military or go to college, you must vote for Barack Obama.

And here’s the video…