The Affordable Care Act didn't happen because Obama played by Hillary's rules.

If you ever check out the copy-paste-embed-tweets “explanatory” journalism of Voxdotcom, you’ll note Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias love to boost Hillary by arguing that she is just so damn realistic and pragmatic. (Of course, others might argue she’s “never, ever come to pass” cynical.)

Here’s a truth, though, that many DC elites who attack Bernie from their million-dollar Logan Circle apartments have probably forgotten: Obama achieved health care reform not because of cautious Hillary-style centrist and “pragmatic” politics, but because he dreamed big and refused to listen when so-called moderates told him to cut his losses and settle for less ambitious health care reform.

(And, yes, a premise of this diary is that eliminating the obscenity of pre-existing conditions was a Big Fucking Deal. Because, by the appalling standard of U.S. health care, it was a BFD.)

Let’s travel back in time together.

In his new book on President Obama's first year in office, "The Promise," Jonathan Alter includes a quote from the president's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, illustrating just how opposed Emanuel was to the president's push for comprehensive health care reform. "I begged him not to do this," Emanuel told Alter, as detailed by the Washington Post's Greg Sargent, writing off advanced excerpts put out ahead of the book's release Tuesday. (Hotsheet just got its copy of the book and is planning to dig into it this weekend.) The president overruled Emanuel, telling him, according to the book, that he "wasn't sent here to do school uniforms." The "school uniforms" quip, incidentally, appears to be a shot at former President Bill Clinton, who back in 1996 pushed for public schools to be able to require uniforms.

Ok, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein — and, yes, Paul Krugman — do you get it? Or do I need to be crystal clear?

Cynical Clinton politics — whether from Bill or Hillary — does not achieve transformational change. If you don’t believe me, go back and read Obama’s sarcastic “school uniform” quip. Eight years of Bill didn’t achieve anything transformational for the 99-percent — it did, however, take away welfare from desperate single mothers and channel millions to the prison-industrial complex.

To the contrary, transformational change has always come from leaders, like Bernie, who “dream big” — like Roosevelt giving us Social Security, Johnson delivering Medicare and Medicaid, and Obama ending the barbaric practice of pre-existing conditions and (dramatically) overhauling health insurance.

DC journalists with an interest in becoming Hillary’s Press Secretary can make stupid arguments all they want, but they can’t rewrite history and twist facts. The ACA happened because Obama engaged in the “dream big” politics of Bernie, not the cynical dream small and “beg the lobbyists for scraps” politics of Hillary.

Prefer to watch a video? This is the thinking that got us the Affordable Care Act: