President Obama just gave another speech explaining what his health care reform plan would do, and how it is not scary. This time, though, he was surrounded by doctors in lab coats! He also finally got real:

He made the simple point that reform has actually already passed the House and Senate (with a supermajority!), and that all we are doing now is finalizing the details. And without using the word "reconciliation," he attacked Republicans who are hypocritically calling reconciliation an unprecedented approach to legislation:

So, no matter which approach you favor, I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform. We have debated this issue thoroughly, not just for a year, but for decades. Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a supermajority of sixty votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote that was cast on welfare reform, the Children's Health Insurance Program, COBRA health coverage for the unemployed, and both Bush tax cuts – all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.

The speech was also, in a way, pushback against Rahm Emanuel—or at least the idea that "Rahm Emanuel was right about everything." The issue is crafting legislation that helps people, not doing well in the polls, Obama said, and doing it in a piecemeal way (as Rahm reportedly wanted) wouldn't have made a much more than a dent in the problem.

It was not very stirring, but Obama's best speeches as President are actually the ones that lay out a simple argument that, even when filtered through the media and the noise machine, retain their core meaning. We'll see how this one does on that front.

So let's all get cautiously optimistic again!