I think it’s clear to all the rest of us that traditional “big media” is pretty much dead. Hillary took her message directly to the people. Even better, she is planning on having live web chats in the near future to discuss campaign issues. After I watched her video, I sent her an email saying congratulations and good luck.

I guess I should feel sorry for traditional news outlets, since they are such an anachronism in a world of blogs, podcasts, and one billion websites, but I can’t. In recent years, they have ignored so many issues that are actually important to working Americans: universal healthcare, decent schools, a living minimum wage, etc. At the same time, the big networks have been afraid to harshly criticize Bush’s failed war – a war that the majority of Americans are against and which has cost taxpayers billions.

We all know things aren’t working; things are getting worse. So it’s time to just cut the middle-man and start having a conversation with each other. Luckily, we have the technology to do that. Clinton realizes that the power of “word of mouth” is now much more effective than just buying campaign ads. Right wing talk show hosts that dominate the airwaves in so many American cities can no longer drown out the discussion. There are actually other people, lots of people, who very much want things like healthcare.

Universal healthcare is one of those topics that is supposedly “controversial” in America. I can’t imagine why. America is the richest country in the world, yet it is the only industrialized country that does not provide its citizen with basic healthcare. With almost half of Americans uninsured, it is a problem that can no longer be swept under the rug.

I live in Japan where, like all other civilized countries, there is universal health coverage. When I talk to other foreigners here (Canadians, Australians, Germans, etc.) and tell them that the right to healthcare is controversial in America, they are quite perplexed. What kind of country is America when the number one cause of bankruptcy is the inability to pay medical bills? An unstable place to live if you ask me.

In Hillary’s video, one thing she said is that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to survive in America. That’s a rephrasing of the American dream. Many low wage Americans work two or three jobs but still don’t even have access to basic healthcare. Hillary’s message to renew the promise of the American dream is a powerful one that won’t be easily discredited by those who are happy with “business as usual”.

My wife recently rented the movie “John Q” starring Denzel Washington. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an absurdist comedy about the American healthcare system. Washington plays a father who is forced to hijack a hospital at gunpoint so that his young son can have a life-saving heart operation. At first the plot seems totally ridiculous, but I’m surprised it hasn’t happened in America yet.

Why should people who are not criminals, who do honest work, have to live in fear that they won’t have access to modern healthcare – something that is as important to staying alive as food and water – because it is just so damn expensive?

The story of “John Q” could never be set in any other industrialized country; it wouldn’t be plausible. First, in all those other countries, people have access to healthcare. Second, most of those countries are smart enough not to allow private citizens to carry around firearms – but that’s another story!

The reason that Hillary will become the next president is because she gets it. When you really talk directly to the average person, you find out that their biggest anxieties, the things that keep them awake at night, are not imaginary Weapons of Mass Destructions or whether we shouldn’t use stem cells to cure Alzheimer’s disease(!!). What keeps them awake at night is how to pay the doctor bills for a sick child, or how they are ever going to be able to afford to retire, or how we can find a way to build safe, stable communities of people in the United States again.

Hillary will win by focusing on those real issues (verses the real “non-issues” of the last six years). The message once again – this time in form of emails and webchats – is “Power To The People – Right On!”