Many of us remember the image of the Rev. Jesse Jackson crying during President Obama's victory speech in 2008. The civil rights activist put pen to paper for the Guardian to rally the president's supporters. Obama has done the best he can, and it's been good work, Jackson writes.
So yes, when President Obama took office, the US and the world were in a deep, dark economic (and political) hole. But now we are moving through fields towards the mountaintop. Though we've yet to reach that point, the arrows are pointing in the right direction – jobs, industry, healthcare cover all on the rise, wars on the decline.
Romney and the conservatives have derided the comprehensive health care plan as "Obamacare." But the truth is that Obama does care. People would be dead without health insurance. And young people benefit as they can stay on their parents' health plans into their 20s. The insurance companies were charging higher and higher fees for ever lower cover and they claimed the right not to insure people. Obama broke up that kind of exploitative behaviour and today 30 million more Americans are covered. Obama's historic healthcare legislation will stand the test of time.
And all of this achieved despite the attempt by the Republicans to demean the president. They called him a liar. They said that he's not an American, he's not a Christian, he's illegitimate.
Read the Rev. Jesse Jackson's entire piece at the Guardian.
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