Tag: Bobby Rush

He had lost to Bobby Rush by 30 points in a race for Congress and was at a crossroads. Now I look back and realize there were actually more important things I needed to do, and the fact that I didn’t make time for those things is a source of embarrassment and shame. From the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep, I was thinking: Did I miss something? Is there a call I haven’t made? A lot of skills I learned were essential to my work in politics, the first of which is narrative. Campaigns are about telling a story of who you are and where you want to lead. Two years after getting married, we had a daughter, Lauren, who had very serious epilepsy. When I was Obama’s political adviser and we were working on the Affordable Care Act, the best political advice was, “Don’t do this because it’s risky, and we have a lot of things going on right now. Seven have failed.” But the other part of me had almost gone bankrupt when I was a young reporter and insurance wouldn’t cover Lauren’s medications and other things she needed. And that made everything real.