While it is true that Obama's first few years were spent as a terribly optimistic negotiator against a party that saw him as the incarnation of evil, a bigger part of the blame can be put at the feet of the Democratic establishment for imposing people Joe Lieberman upon the people the people of Connecticut against the will of their own base, then they have the gall to claim "we need to be realistic, single payer is not getting passed"... of course it's not, you people made sure of that! Don't even get me started on their refusal to nuke the filibuster, which would have made all those issues moot in the first place.
Yes, that is right. It was Lieberman and Nelson who killed both the public option, and lowering the age of Medicare.
To be fair, Nelson hold Nebraska, there weren't better options.
But Lieberman over Lamont is inexcusable.
I won't claim that the defect bill would have been passed, but had Obama been half as tyrannical as the tea party claimed him to be, I like to speculate he could have extracted more concessions out of an isolated and besieged (deciding vote) Ben Nelson.
