The promotional video before President Obama gave his address at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday featured an unsubtle shot at current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel as advising his boss to be cravenly political and stop Obamacare.
Among the White House achievements championed in the video was the passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. However, one of the voices in the video relays that Emanuel, as Chief of Staff during the first two years of Obama's administration, tried to get him to kill the bill because it would cost him re-election in 2012.
"A lot of people argued the politics were too costly," former adviser David Axelrod said.
"Rahm Emanuel came to him and said you're going to have to pull the bill, because if you push this legislation, you will lose in 2012," another voice said.
However, the video depicts Obama as soldiering on to get it passed, no matter the politics. Obamacare would wind up passing Congress without a single Republican vote before Obama signed it into law.
Emanuel's stock has plummeted after the Chicago police shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald. Reports that he knew earlier than he first acknowledged that initial law enforcement accounts of what happened differed from the video footage led to calls for his resignation.