When Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) glanced at his schedule and found that his staff had planned a health forum at 8:30 on a Monday morning, his initial reaction was not delight. Until he got there and found a crowd of 700 that, as someone else we know might say, was fired up and ready to go.

It wasn't a fluke. Dodd had other forums since then, drawing hundreds. People are ready for change. And this time, Dodd told reporters at a breakfast briefing sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, change is coming.

Folks back home still hear the same old distortions from the anti-reform forces. But even though foes of reform are mounting ad campaigns and ginning up their scary op-ed machines, Dodd doesn't think it packs much punch anymore. People have witnessed, with their own eyes and their own wallets, what's happened to US health care:

It seems sort of what I call bumper sticker reactions. Socialized medicine. Government takeover. I won't have a choice, I won't be able to choose my doctor, I won't be able to choose my plan. Washington is going to be deciding. It's like some old ads in a way. I don't think they are resonating terribly well. Except within that similar constituency, which is shrinking it seems to me. ... That's what I hear. But I don't think it has much currency with the general population. (video)

Having the various health care "strange bedfellow" coalitions of business and labor, drug companies and consumer groups, forming pro-reform alliances is quite different from the dynamic in the early 1990s. That also helps dull the attack messages from the "socialized medicine" crowd, he said.

Many of the people who Dodd meets at forums and town meetings have their own health care horror stories about cost, care and quality. It underscores his own belief in a "four pillar" approach to reform—quality, prevention, cost and universality.

"This is an issue now that really reaches," he said.  "This isn't just a question of poor people or children or a narrow group out there. This is one that is widely felt from a lot of different perspectives. And I think to derail this, at this critical moment would be a huge mistake.''

Dodd, a long time member of the Senate HELP committee and a close friend of its ailing chairman Sen. Edward Kennedy, has been acting as a deputy for Kennedy at times, although he stressed that the Massachusetts senator was still hard at work and deeply involved in the health reform initiative.

Lots of tough decisions, and tough politics, lie ahead, he acknowledged. The public plan remains highly controversial. Dodd himself likes the idea of some form of public plan, because people like choices and need different kinds of health care at different points in their life. But he worries about the amount of sound and fury already mounting about the proposal. Maybe some new language would help. "I believe there is some common ground that can be achieved around that option."

Dodd made a plea for a bipartisan bill. Not because the Democrats necessarily need all that many Republican votes (and it just got at least a little bit easier with Sen. Arlen Specter's party switch) but because it's better for the country and the health care system in the long run if both sides agree to change the system and do what it takes to keep it working in the future.

Overall, he said, "I'm tremendously optimistic" that Congress will succeed this year. The moral failure of leaving 46 million of "our fellow citizens uncovered" and the practical imperative of our economic crisis, combine to give health reform an urgency and a momentum it lacked in the past. A bit more push from President Obama would help, he added. In 1993–94 the Clintons left too little to Congress. Obama has to be careful not to leave too much. "I want the White House involved," Dodd said. "They need to be at the table."