I was listening to Howard Dean on Countdown with Keith Olbermann the other night and he said something that not only got me thinking, but took my heart and mind back to the night of Obama’s election. While discussing the fight for health care reform, and why opponents of reform seemed to be more galvanized than its supporters, Dean incisively reminded listeners that “Electing Barack Obama was the beginning of change in America, not the end.” It was then that I realized that while declaring victory in the 2008 Presidential Election battle against John McCain, Barack Obama, perhaps unintentionally, declared a premature victory in another battle: the battle for change.

At that very moment, for the first time since his administration gave the green light to logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, I became disappointed with our 44^th President.  Quickly replaying in my head was a declaration that inspired euphoria on election night, but yet has me so angry now. Governing did not turn out to be quite so easy. After all, it’s now nine months later and yet change still has not come on the single issue, and key Obama agenda item, I care about changing most: health care. On that November winter night, on Chicago’s banks of Lake Michigan, Obama’s resounding claim that “Change has come to America” funneled so terribly the delusive tendency of the man he so eagerly replaced. What I know now is that, with those words, nothing could have come closer to or have been as inaccurate as President Bush’s now notorious, over six year-old, declaration of “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. That was Obama’s George Bush moment and, judging by which side has been more visible and forceful in shaping the health care debate, it must have sent liberals into hibernation. After a long and hard election cycle, Obama sang his weary warriors a lullaby. As a result, they are now sleeping and the type of reform they were promised during the election season is sputtering; their window of opportunity closing.

While I hope that Obama’s delusive tendency is a little less severe than that of his predecessor, if liberals do not soon wake-up from their election night comatose,  it might be yet another generation until the changes Obama promised actually come to fruition. The Washington Post has called the administration’s push for health care reform the “Grass-Roots Battle [that] Tests The Obama Movement.”  Obama’s entire campaign, filled with sweeping rhetoric such as “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek,” was driven by the philosophy that grass-roots activism can fuel government and drive legislation. Has the entire spirit and hope of his campaign subsided? What about that moment when we were supposed to come together to save this planet from the rising oceans, the spreading famine or the terrible storms that devastate our lands? Without a lively grassroots effort buttressing his ideas and agenda, Obama can and will not be able to govern effectively. When Obama supporters are no longer “fired up” and “ready to go”, and when they allow themselves to be shouted down by the fringe of the Republican Party at health care town halls, something has gone terribly wrong. I remember, as a John Edwards intern leading up to the Iowa caucuses, that no one shouted louder or was more motivated for change than the activists and supporters that helped Obama emerge victorious from that state and propelled him to the Democratic nomination.

Do you remember when 60,000 people packed the largest venue in the red-state of South Carolina just to hear Obama speak? Do you remember when college students sacrificed their vacations and people old enough to be my great-grandparents braved the cold Iowa winter to caucus for Obama, sometimes standing in crowded gymnasiums for over an hour? How about when thousands of people knocked doors and made phone calls to get people to the polls in order to effectuate change? It’s time to re-ignite that flame and pass meaningful health care reform — reform that gets everyone covered, controls costs, and includes the choice of a public option.

Yes we (still) can. The only question left now is if we will.

Matt Horowitz