Bill Clinton: Republicans hope you have memory loss.

Bill Clinton did the Obama campaign team a huge favor and formed the basis of a response (to GOP's attempts to rehash Ronald Reagan's election question over 20 years ago) to the question, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?:

"In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president’s reelection was pretty simple: We left him a total mess, he hasn't finished cleaning it up, so fire him and put us back in."

Maybe Republican supporters feel otherwise, but I remember what it was like, the run-up to the election, when people left and right were losing their jobs on pace with the Great Depression, and salaries (and hours) were being cut every month.  There was no hope in 2008 leading up to the election; there was just fear and distress.

(All the while, do you remember how in late 2007 and much of 2008, Republican politicians insisted that Democrats should shut up about the dire straits of banks, and that all was well with the American economy?  I do; I remember it clearly, because on my flight to Honolulu in April 2008, while striking up a conversation with a retired teacher flying back home, she told me that she belonged to an investment club, and she asked what I thought about Dow 20000.  I told her quite straightforward, the economy was about to tank and that the dominoes had already begun to fall.  She asked me why; I told her to look at the shrinking availability of credit and declining housing prices.)

And in a retort of the Republican Mediscare, Clinton specifically called out Paul Ryan for his audacity:

"It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did."

But more importantly on Medicare, Bill Clinton noted carefully that Mitt's plan to voucherize Medicare for those under 55, would only effect savings from 2023 onward.  Meanwhile, Mitt's promise to repeal those Medicare savings in Obama's ACA, would re-adjust the solvency date of Medicare back from 2024 to 2016.  In other words, Mitt and Paul are lying to seniors when they say that current seniors won't face any benefit reductions under their plan; Mitt's plan guarantees that starting in 2016, Medicare will have no choice but to cut benefits.

Finally, Bill Clinton reasserted Barack Obama's point on the myth of self-made success (which Republicans have not simply taken out of context but have recontextualized it to create their own meaning):

"The Republican narrative is that all of us who amount to anything are completely self-made. One of our greatest Democratic Chairmen, Bob Strauss, used to say that every politician wants you to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself, but it ain't so."

When all of the pundits are talking about how well Bill handled the substantive issues, throwing them right back at the GOP, you know he hit a home run.