 "Photo: Reity O’Brien")
 "Photo: Reity O’Brien")
WILMINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton addressed Delaware’s Democratic base at the annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner Nov. 10 at the Chase Center.
With his characteristic Arkansas twang and off-the-cuff delivery, Clinton urged Delaware’s Democrats to support the democratic policy reform.
Clinton said in New Jersey and Virginia the two Republican gubernatorial victories last week did not undermine the Democratic sweeps in 2006 and 2008.
“The country is still basically with the Democrats,” Clinton said. “But we have a big challenge because people only hire us when things are in a mess.”
He said pundits, who claim that these recent Republican victories prove that 2008 was a fluke, are wrong.
“[President Barack Obama] won in a way because we were no longer just a bi-racial country, multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic country,” Clinton said. “The day after that 2006 election I told Hilary, ‘If we don’t nominate a convicted felon in 2008, we’re going to win the White House.’ ”
He said Obama found success last year because of three conditions that determine all presidential elections: the quality of the candidates, the condition of the country and the culture.
“President Obama won by a handsome margin because we had all three things,” Clinton said. “Our candidate was better, their conditions were bad and the culture was accepting of a person who said we need to rise and fall together.”
He said Democrats should consider how they want to feel when Obama leaves office and highlighted three indicators of a successful presidency.
“We want our country to be doing better, coming together and not tearing apart, and asking if our kids have a brighter future,” Clinton said.
He said the five most crucial problems facing democrats in Congress are the economy, healthcare, education, energy and the deficit.
“I supported the stimulus because the economy was shrinking,” Clinton said, “And there was no other way to stop it from shrinking.”
He said the answer to whether the recession is over is yes, no and maybe.
“If you teach economics at the nearest college, the answer is yes,” Clinton said.
However, he said with unemployment levels at their highest in decades, the recession is not over for people in the real world.
“For those who are part of the 30 percent of people that lose their health insurance each year, it is not over,” Clinton said.
He said the president’s most urgent task is job creation.
“There are lots of things we can do,” Clinton said. “There is over $900 billion in reserves uncommitted to loans in America’s banks right now.”
He said the government needs to put construction workers back to work by retrofitting every building. Such a program would put a million people back to work in six to eight months.
Clinton said healthcare was the next item on the agenda, and the country needs to do something about reform now.
“Most of the conservatives or independents you talk to may not really care that 16 percent of Americans don’t have healthcare, as long as they do,” he said. “They should care about this, that America pays 16.5 percent of its income on healthcare.”
America’s healthcare system ranks 35th in the world, Clinton said.
“Colombia, with all the drug lords, ranks 22nd,” he said, “And they only spend 5 percent of their income on healthcare.”
Clinton said our insurance system is so expensive because 30 cents of every dollar goes to paperwork and because we are always paying for individual procedures.
“When it comes to healthcare, Americans have ADD,” he said. “We don’t want to wait. We want it yesterday.”
The Geisinger Medical Group, Clinton said, is a healthcare model which improves care and lowers costs.
“You can enroll with them, and if you have any complication with any surgery that puts you back in the hospital within 90 days, they pay the bill, not you,” he said, “The cost of enrolling is cheaper, and the error rate has gone to zero.”
Clinton said he did not expect either the House or the Senate bill to be perfect.
“We need to put a bill on the President’s desk, and he needs to sign it so that in the state of the union he’s not explaining why we don't have it,” he said.
Clinton said the unemployment problems could be solved by healthcare reform.
“One of the reasons people didn’t get pay raises this decade,” he said, “is because funds that would normally go toward pay raises went toward doubled insurance premiums.”
Though all the kinks of the new system may take four or five years to straighten out, Clinton said the U.S. will not be able to compete unless the country’s healthcare system is in line with other countries.
Improving the affordability and delivery of our higher education system was the next goal he cited.
“From the end of World War Two to 2001, when I left office,” he said, “through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, the U.S. has always ranked first in the world for the percentage of our young people that graduate from four-year universities.”
He said in this decade alone, the U.S. have fallen from first to10th.
“We have got to get back to number one by changing delivery system and making college more affordable,” Clinton said.
He said Americans also need to take personal responsibility in changing the ways the country produces and consumes energy.
“Ninety-five percent of scientists agree that the world is warming. By sometime around 2050, we're going to lose 50 feet of Manhattan island,” he said. “Thank goodness my foundation’s office is in the middle of the island.”
Clinton said the only way to save the environment and bring sustainable economic growth is through green job creation.
“We have to have a source of new jobs every five to eight years,” he said. “Delaware will be back to work, and we will be prospering again.”
Clinton said the growing deficit should not be ignored by Democrats.
“It may be my depression mentality,” he said. “But we have too much debt and we cannot sustain in.”
Clinton said he hopes Obama will express to the public that we have got to stop mortgaging our national security, economic sovereignty and children’s futures.
“As we work to rebuild America, whatever the president decides to do in these hot flash areas, we’ve still got to realize that most people every day and everywhere get up worrying about the same things you do and want the same things you do,”Clinton said.
He ended his comments on a globally unifying note, suggesting that the America’s place of respect in the global community remains high.
“If [people around the world] think that Americans are on their side,” Clinton said, “it contributes to our national security even when they disagree with us.”
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