It's from a 2006 article by David Sirota.
Mr. Obama Goes to Washington | The Nation
The quotation in context
Obama has a remarkable ability to convince you that his positions are motivated purely by principles, not tactical considerations. This skill is so subtle and impressive, it resembles Luke Skywalker's mastery of the Force. It's a powerful tool for a Democratic Party that often emanates calculation rather than conviction. "I don't think in ideological terms. I never have," Obama said, continuing on the healthcare theme. "Everybody who supports single-payer healthcare says, 'Look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.' That represents 1 million, 2 million, 3 million jobs of people who are working at Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?"
Even if you took that as factual concern it's obviously a bullshit defence because;
A) if you require that many make work jobs then it's more productive to have them work in some other administrative department or even just sweep the streets than in a role that only destroys wealth, keeps people sick (and unworking if you only care about employment stats), or kills them
B) the fucking companies outsourced most of those jobs first and now use AI anyway, so you didn't save shit
Yeah as Sirota implies though Obama likely doesn’t see things this way, it’s just a rhetorical device to justify his devotion to the status quo
I mean, I agree. It's just so shallow and intellectually lazy - really shows how little work they feel they had to put in to defend it.