I don't see how that's Obama's fault, except to the extent that he hasn't been specific enough about where the cost reductions will come from,

It's Obama's fault because he let it get started in the first place.  He started that by first, on the day after the election, making it clear to Harry Reid that he wanted nothing to happen to Lieberman despite Lieberman both campaigning aginst Obama and going pretty negative about it, too.  So, the Blue Dogs got the message they could do whatever they wanted to stick up Obama and his agenda and further their own interests and no harm would come to them.

Then, along the way, Obama listened to the people telling him that they needed the campaign cash from the insurance companies, Pharmaceutical companies, and so on, for the coming 2010 elections.  This argument was furthered by the advocates for that approach arguing that they needed that cash more than they needed their activists - the machine which the campaign had built.  So, if you think back to the days after the election and before the inauguration, there was no activity from the holder of the list of millions of email addresses which was promised to be deployed to push through Obama's agenda.  And it got even quieter after the inauguration.

Nope, all that the email list has been used for has been to push people to have parties about once a month, usually to celebrate while watching Obama talk over their heads.  It's been about as useful as George Bush telling us to go shopping.

The core error in this approach - beyond whoring out the Democrats to the corporate stakeholders to both keep them in "favor" (really, non-opposition) to the Obama health care agenda was not that it required the bill Obama would have to sign to kowtow to the corporate interests rather than the people who vote and thus require people to buy insurance from the same clowns who can't help themselves but to raise their rates and lower their services every year.  

No.

The core error was in their failing to recognize that within a couple weeks of it becoming apparent that the corporate health-care folks were being cozened off supporting the Republicans and were shipping their money to the Democrats (in anticipation of 2010), the Roberts Court decided (or, at least, 5 of them did) to rehear the Citizens United case and to recast the questions presented to whether all campaign finance limits are unconstitutional limitations on First Amendment rights.  Everyone has recognized this as a huge piece of judicial activism, but no one seems to have grasped what it means.

In other words, while the Dems may have captured some of the corporate money for 2010, the Republicans on the Court will simply remove all the limits which had previously constrained their base from dumping their billions into the campaign.  In case you're wondering how I can be so certain how that case is going to come out, consider this:  Mitch McConnell has been granted argument time.

So, in short, the Republicans can rely on their five votes on the Court (just like in 2000) and now draw on their wingnut billionaires to spend, spend and spend without limit, and the Dems have both given the back of the hand to their base (who, like me, may well sit home) and made sure that whatever they do pass will hurt their base right in the wallet.

From PNHP.org:

If my interpretation of Section 3106 is correct  - if the Senate HELP Committee's "option" program is going to be balkanized and run by the nonprofit wing of the insurance industry - then reasonable people have to conclude that the deck is really stacked against the Committee's "option" program. Even if Section 3106 authorized public employees, not Blue Cross Blue Shield employees, to create the dozens or hundreds of "community health insurance options" called for by Section 3106, the program would fail to pose any challenge to the insurance industry and might even die in the cradle. The health insurance industry has been very difficult to break into since at least the 1980s, and has become more so in the wake of the merger madness that swept through the industry in the early 1990s. But if public employees are not going to be directly responsible for creating the "community options" - if the nonprofit wing of the insurance industry is going to be doing that - then the entire "community option" project of the Senate HELP Committee amounts to a cruel joke on the public. Should the public trust corporations like Blue Cross and Kaiser Permanente to make a good faith effort to build competing insurance companies?

Section 3106 is a mess, but its meaning becomes clear after several readings. Section 3106 does not create the "Medicare-like" program promised by Jacob Hacker, HCAN, Howard Dean, and other "option" advocates. Instead it proposes a program that authorizes DHHS to create numerous health insurance companies tied to geographic areas, and to contract with members of the existing insurance industry to create and possibly run those companies.

Leaders of the "public option" movement have an obligation to advertise the HELP Committee bill truthfully. It is not accurate to say the HELP Committee bill creates a "robust" or "strong" public option. It is not even accurate to say the HELP Committee bill creates one "option." The truth is the "option" is balkanized and very weak. In fact, HCAN, Andy Stern, Howard Dean and other "option" advocates who have praised the HELP Committee bill should do more than cease to praise it. They should tell Congress they oppose it.

I thought she was a doofus even then.

But I should write and thank her.  She made Weiner's point that 45 year old should be allowed on Medicare.  After all, why isn't Weiner on it?

Drive and score.  The lane is there.  An open lane.  You may get fouled hard on the shot, but that only gives you a chance for the and-one.  

Do I think you will?

No.