This is Matt Davis. Jon Shapiro just lent me his laptop after accidentally treating the crowd here to a full-volume Youtube video when he opened it up to blog. Ironically, the thing wouldn’t shut up, so as former kidney patient Jordan Kokich talked to the hushed audience about her struggles, Barack Obama’s voice was echoing from the Macbook at the back here. It was pretty embarrassing/funny/embarrassing. Mainly embarrassing, actually. Jon had to turn it off, eventually. So now I’m stuck with it for the sake of appearances while he’s off taking pictures. Anyway…

Hillary Clinton just emerged up here at OHSU, after forcing sick kids to wait two hours in the cold to see her. Staffers brought out blankets at one point, so a rather surreal, staged audience of about 36 doctors, family members, and kids on saline drips, most of whom are wrapped in blankets and looking like they need to pee, are watching as Clinton talks with Kokich, a teenager she met in the nineties who has since had a kidney transplant, and the mother of a sick child whose family don’t qualify for the Oregon Health Plan.

Clinton says this morning is about: “My passionate commitment to universal healthcare. I believe it is the unfinished business that we have to resolve.”

“How could you run for the Democratic nomination and not support universal healthcare?” she asks.

She’s introducing a single mother who works at Starbucks, with two children who have spina bifida and bipolar disorder, and whose insurance coverage will run out when the kids stop school. At the moment they have to spend $200 a month on medication.

“I think what we’re concerned mostly about is as they become older, where are they going to be? Are they really going to be able to live independently?” the woman asks.

Clinton says we need an “American coalition that will take on the insurance companies. I don’t believe we can get there without setting the goal of universal healthcare.”

“It’s one of the main reasons I’m running for president,” she continued. “It’s something we need to do for both moral and economic reasons.”

There are about a hundred press here, secret service, and as Clinton closes to take questions fro the press, they’re playing “I won’t back down,” for the FOURTH time this morning. Note to the world’s press: Sorry about Jon’s Youtube.