'Unlike the Kennedys ...'
Lefty Ideological Pouting Alert: Neal Gabler bemoans Obama's lack of "passion," suggesting he's unmoved ("at least publicly") by the plight of the jobless, the sick and even our brave soldiers in uniform:

Unlike the Kennedys, Obama never seems to have identified with the alienated and dispossessed. He worked with them, as a community organizer, but he admits he was never one of them ...

Ah, Neal, the Kennedys were never one of 'them' either -- and neither were you. Speaking of the Kennedys, Ted's widow has a message for the ideologues pouting about not having their 'public option':

In the early 1970s, Ted worked with the Nixon administration to find consensus on health-care reform. Those efforts broke down in part because the compromise wasn't ideologically pure enough for some constituency groups. More than 20 years passed before there was another real opportunity for reform, years during which human suffering only increased.

She doesn't get into how her husband's own ideological stubbornness was one of the main reasons why we didn't get universal health care 40 long years ago (I'm pretty sure Neal won't be mentioning that fact in his forthcoming puff-biography on Ted). But Vicki's point is right: Sometimes half a loaf is better than no loaf, something Ted learned through experience and something the Neals of the world will never get. ... Megan has her own message for all the discouraged Gablers out there (especially those like Gabler who now, all of a sudden, have kind words for George W. Bush):

Ultimately, the moderates had a very good alternative to negotiated agreement (on health care), and the progressives didn't, and that was crystal clear from Day 1. That meant the progressives were never, ever going to get very much. This was not a failure of political will or political skill. It was the manifestation of a political reality that has long been obvious to everyone who wasn't living in a fantasy world. If progressives decide that the lesson from this is that they haven't been sufficiently demanding and intransigent, they are going to find themselves about as popular with the rest of America as the Bush Republicans, and probably lose their party the House next year.

Hell, even Paul Krugman now admits Democrats could have had a health-care deal decades ago. The obstacle? Their cherished 'single-payer' system. Lefty ideologues can never admit they've been their own worst enemies when it comes to universal health care.  ¶ 8:21 AM