Now THIS is what I'm talking about!!
DAYYYYUM!! She slices, she dices, she cuts through Romney's bull like a hot knife through butter.
And she does it with style.
This is a good thing. May I say that I'm falling in love with this woman?
(transcript complete...I've bold-faced parts that either she emphasized or, in some cases, which I find particularly noteworthy)
Hi, I'm Stephanie Cutter, Deputy Campaign Manager at Obama for America.
When Mitt Romney stood in front of his white board, he didn't tell you the truth about his plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program.
He also distorted the truth about the President's record of strengthening Medicare.
So, we're not gonna let Romney get away with this, and we need your help, as usual, to get the facts out there.
So here's our own digital whiteboard to set the record straight.
First, Mitt Romney wants you to believe that the President cuts Medicare benefits. That's not true. The President's plan doesn't cut them one dime. He ends taxpayer subsidies to insurance companies, and weeds out waste, fraud and abuse, which saves the Medicare system $716 billion.
Paul Ryan thought that was a pretty good idea...in fact, he included those same savings in his own budget!
WE use those savings to expand benefits and strengthen Medicare. We close the donut hole, which is already saving seniors $600 per year on their prescription drugs.
Second, Mitt Romney claims current seniors won't notice anything different under his plan. Of course they will! Romney wants to repeal Obamacare, making seniors once again pay out-of-pocket for critical preventive care, like mammograms and wellness visits.
He also adds all that waste and fraud right back into the system, and gives insurance companies $150 billion of your hard-earned dollars.
Let's go to the third part of Romney's chart. He says President Obama threatens Medicare for the next generation. Now, that's a flat-out LIE. So, he's zero for three on his white board.
The truth is, Obamacare extends Medicare's life by 8 years. That's according to Medicare's own experts.
The fourth thing Romney wrote on his white board is that he, himself, will keep Medicare afloat. Come on, that's just ridiculous. If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are elected, Medicare will be bankrupt by the end of their first term. That's right...in just 4 years. And again, that's according to Medicare's own experts.
And that's because they want to reverse what President Obama has done to strengthen Medicare. So, not one of the claims on Romney's white board is actually true.
Here's what is true about the Romney/Ryan plan to turn Medicare into vouchers:
--They want to take away the guaranteed benefits that seniors have earned over a lifetime of hard work. In their place, they want to give people a voucher, that caps what Medicare will cover, and then tell them they're on their own for whatever costs are left over.
Non-partisan experts have said that a plan like this would cost seniors as much as $6,400 more...each year.
So, these are the facts. The President is already strengthening Medicare and helping seniors save money.
Romney and Ryan would replace Medicare with a voucher that would end up costing seniors thousands of dollars.
And remember...they're doing all of this to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
This is an incredibly important issue. So please share this video with your friends and family. You can even show your grandparents how to post it on Tumblr.
As always, thanks for your help.
The transcript doesn't really do it justice; Cutter's timing, voice inflection and so on add a lot to the impact.
I don't have much to add, but will say that there's a couple of points that stand out to me, aside from the no-nonsense, not-screwing-around-here attitude of the whole thing:
--She starts out by locking Romney to Ryan at the hip, referring to it as HIS plan, not Ryan's.
--The "not gonna let him get away with this" and "come on, that's just ridiculous" bits, combined with the "get real" line in Obama's education ad mocking Romney's "borrow some money from your parents" crap have a very everyman/populist tone to them.
--"Now, that's a flat-out LIE!" You don't often hear the "L" word in political ads. Usually they stick to "mislead", " fudges", "misrepresents" or "exaggerates". She calls it out for what it is: A lie.
--She makes sure to remind people why Romney/Ryan are screwing over old people: So they can suck even more millions out of the system
--The line at the end about grandparents using Tumblr is a nice final touch.
Here's a direct link to the video at YouTube:
http://youtu.be/...