Bill Clinton at the DNC

Kari Chisholm

Wow. What a stellar performance from President Clinton - the "wonk in chief" as Ezra Klein dubbed him:

“People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets,” former President Bill Clinton said on Wednesday night. “What new ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic.”

Ezra cites a Clinton stanza on Medicaid:

Now, folks, this is serious, because it gets worse. And you won’t be laughing when I finish telling you this. They also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming 10 years. Of course, that’s going to really hurt a lot of poor kids.

But that’s not all. A lot of folks don’t know it, but nearly two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care for Medicare seniors who are eligible for Medicaid. It’s going to end Medicare as we know it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities, including a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down’s syndrome or autism or other severe conditions.

And, honestly, just think about it. If that happens, I don’t know what those families are going to do. So I know what I’m going to do: I’m going to do everything I can to see that it doesn’t happen. We can’t let it happen. We can’t.

What did you think of the case that Clinton made for President Obama?

By Kari Chisholm Sept. 06, 2012 Posted in Video.