But now that a so-called Gang of 10 -- five liberal Senate Dems, five conservative Senate Dems -- has begun meeting to seek a public option compromise, the argument for substance over (public option) symbol is getting real traction. Two "compromise" proposals have been floated: Letting Americans as young as 55 buy into Medicare, and ditching the public option for a proposal to let individuals use their own money, or federal subsidies, to buy into the federal workers' plans administered by the Office of Personnel Management -- the same plans offered to Congress and the president.

Letting older but still Medicare-ineligible people buy into the popular public plan for seniors seems like a clear win. (Although Democrats seem to know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so without details, it's hard to say that conclusively..) People aged 54 to 65 are the hardest hit by our current system -- they're most likely to be denied care or dropped by insurance carriers for health troubles, all while also being hit hard by layoffs. Plus, adding a big chunk of "younger" folks to Medicare seems like a way to stabilize Medicare as well as -- assuming the experiment is successful -- gradually make a case for "Medicare for all."

The proposal to let the uninsured buy into the same federal programs that Congress uses has political appeal, but even more implementation problems than lowering the age for (possibly self-funded) Medicare eligibility. The biggest problem is that it leaves the private insurance system basically untouched, unless the OPM began negotiating more fiercely.

At any rate, the power of both proposals is in their implementation, so it's too early to declare either of them good or bad. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden told Rachel Maddow Monday night that the liberal Senate negotiators' goal is: "We want to be able to give an ultimatum to the insurance industry: You treat the consumer right or they're going to take their business somewhere else." We'll see.

I'm coming to reluctantly accept the conventional political wisdom that a flawed bill is better than no bill for the Democrats and President Obama, mainly because Democrats have shown no talent for making the GOP pay for its obstructionist tactics. Hard-liners like MSNBC's Ed Schultz -- I was on "The Ed Show" today debating this issue -- seem to think liberal Democrats could make political hay out of the GOP's defeating healthcare reform in 2010. But since they've been unable to make such a case in 2009, I'm not sure why it would work next year.

At any rate, here are a few of the more interesting summaries I read today:

From Jonathan Cohn in the New Republic, on what liberals should demand for compromising on the public option.

Ezra Klein on the same question.

Here's Firedoglake Action's Jon Walker on flaws in the plan to open federal workers' coverage to the uninsured.

And here's Talking Points Memo's frequently updating Health Care Wire. 

Hayden's delusional Obama endorsement in March 2008 made such an impression on me, I can quote whole sentences from memory. Well, one whole sentence, the first: "All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama." Oh, and I remember that he said Obama's "very biography" and his campaign's "very existence" would cure cancer, make my hair silky smooth, and cause pretty, pretty unicorns to dance in my backyard, too.

OK, that last part isn't true.

But I felt like I was in some kind of Maoist reeducation camp, being urged to struggle mightily and cheerfully for Chairman Obama.

So yeah, that old "I told you so" demon drove me back to reread Hayden's Nation piece -- co-signed by Danny Glover, Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr. (but redolent of Hayden's manifesto-writing style) -- and boy, it's even worse than I remember. For those of you saying it's not fair to blame progressives for deluding themselves about Obama, please read this, and then try to make the same argument. Some of my favorite lines below: 

"All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grassroots participation, drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama's very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle-down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below….

"We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined…. We have the proven online capacity to reach millions of swing voters in the primary and general election. We can and will defend Obama against negative attacks from any quarter….

"We take very seriously the argument that Americans should elect a first woman President, and we abhor the surfacing of sexism in this supposedly post-feminist era. But none of us would vote for Condoleezza Rice as either the first woman or first African-American President. We regret that the choice divides so many progressive friends and allies, but believe that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a Clinton presidency all over again, not a triumph of feminism but a restoration of the aging, power-driven Wall Street Democratic hawks at a moment when so much more fresh imagination is possible and needed. A Clinton victory could only be achieved by the dashing of hope among millions of young people on whom a better future depends. The style of the Clintons' attacks on Obama, which are likely to escalate as her chances of winning decline, already risks losing too many Democratic and independent voters in November. We believe that the Hillary Clinton of 1968 would be an Obama volunteer today, just as she once marched in the snows of New Hampshire for Eugene McCarthy against the Democratic establishment."

Oh, and I searched the whole thing: Not one word about Afghanistan. Not even the word "Afghanistan."

I want to be clear here. I am not saying, and I never said, that Clinton was more progressive than Obama on any of these issues. But Hayden, Michael Moore and too many progressives claimed, with zero evidence, that Obama would be more progressive than Clinton. He wasn't, and he isn't. There were many reasons to choose Obama over Clinton, but that he was the better progressive was never one of them. Certainly his Cabinet choices -- including Clinton herself -- are no more progressive than hers would be. Claiming a President Clinton would preside over "a restoration of the aging, power-driven Wall Street Democratic hawks at a moment when so much more fresh imagination is possible and needed" seems particularly silly today (and using "aging" as a pejorative was a poor choice from Hayden's particular demographic, but old habits die hard).

Struggle mightily and cheerfully to forgive yourself for your self-delusion, Tom Hayden and friends. OK, my "I told you so" moment is officially over. 

At the moment he needed all of his persuasive powers, Obama gave the worst major speech of his presidency. I admit: I expected to be, even wanted to be, carried away a bit by Obama's trademark rhetorical magic. But I wasn't, not even a little. I found the speech rushed, sing-songy and perfunctory, delivered by rote. I despise the right-wing Obama-Teleprompter taunts, but even I wanted to say, Look at your audience, not the damn Teleprompter, Mr. President. Obama looked haggard, his eyes deeper set, and I believe this decision pained him. But I'm not sure even he believes it's the right decision. Neocon Danielle Pletka tweeted happily mid-speech: "So far, could be Bush speaking," and later, approvingly: "count me gobsmacked." That makes two of us. Rep. Maxine Waters spoke for me on "Countdown" tonight when she opened her remarks by telling Keith Olbermann: "I'm very saddened."

On specifics: Obama lost me early by rehashing the history of our decision to invade Afghanistan, using mawkish and tired 9/11 imagery. We all know why we went in, and most Democrats supported it: to topple the Taliban government that harbored and supported al-Qaida as it plotted to kill almost 3,000 people in 2001. The question is why are we escalating now? I didn't hear a compelling reason. Obama sugarcoated the problems with the corrupt Karzai administration, and this year's disputed election, with a dismissive "although it was marred by fraud" it was "consistent with the constitution." Wow, that's inspiring. He told Karzai "the days of the blank check are over," but barely defined what that means. The most chilling story I read today was Juan Cole's, on the way Afghanistan's parliament is MIA, and the country's various governmental agencies, from ministries of public works to agriculture, have spent a fraction of the limited funds they have available. It made me hugely pessimistic that Obama's promise of a "civilian surge" had a prayer of making a difference. He needed to address the dysfunction within the Afghan government more specifically to convince me that he could find a way out.

The president also fudged by calling the Afghanistan/Pakistan border "the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda" -- yet it seems to me it actually matters to our strategy which side of the admittedly blurry border is the bigger problem. Finally, maybe most disputably, Obama insisted "we are not facing a broad-based insurgency." It may not be country-wide, but we are certainly facing a broad-based Pashtun insurgency, one that only seems to grow the more troops we send. Obama invoked Iraq -- mistakenly, in my opinion, many times -- but to the extent that the "surge" there was a limited if likely temporary success, it was because it met up with the "Sunni awakening," a homegrown rebellion against al-Qaida and a weariness with war among formerly insurgent Sunnis. Obama needs a "Pashtun awakening," but so far the only one on the horizon features Pashtuns waking up to fight the U.S. Some liberals might be encouraged by his promise to begin withdrawing troops by the summer of 2011, but given the uncertainty of the strategy, who can trust that?

So what's an increasingly disappointed Democrat and Obama supporter to do?

First of all, it would help to admit that in this case, Obama is keeping a campaign promise, not breaking one. Most liberal Obama backers probably either disagreed with his stance on Afghanistan, or didn't take it seriously. Still, many sold him as the only progressive candidate in the race, in stark contrast with the hawkish Hillary Clinton. That was never true, and Obama proved it last year when he made Clinton his secretary of state and kept Robert Gates as defense secretary. The howls of betrayal by progressives I respect like Michael Moore, Arianna Huffington and Keith Olbermann are at least partly a measure of their own misunderstanding of Obama's candidacy. The American left needs to smarten up, and toughen up, if it wants to make deep, lasting change in this country. 

I'm deeply disappointed, saddened even, but I don't feel betrayed. Obama has governed like the centrist he told us and showed us he is, from his early flip-flops on FISA to his Goldman Sachs-friendly bailout policies to compromising on the job-creation parts of his economic stimulus to his tepid backing of a healthcare reform public option. It's going to take hard work by activists on all of those fronts to push him to better solutions.

Still, I'd be remiss if I didn't stress, once again, that the president faced only bad choices in making this decision, thanks to the incompetence of the Bush-Cheney administration. Every day Dick Cheney becomes more despicable, most recently allowing his handmaidens John Harris and Jim Vandehei from Politico to transcribe his raspy, hateful utterances trashing the president on the eve of this crucial national security announcement. "Here's a guy, without much experience, who travels around the world apologizing," Cheney told his stenographers. He even accused Obama of giving "aid and comfort" to al-Qaida, which is, I believe, the definition of treason. Classy. The former vice-president is as deranged as the Birthers who used monkey imagery in a Washington Times ad to label Obama a "usurper." But he's Obama's best friend, because he reminds the left that as disappointing as this president is, on so many, many fronts, he's not Cheney. Small comfort tonight, but it's something. 

I got to talk to Collins as part of my debut on Bloggingheads.tv, and you can see most clips of it here. The book opens on the eve of 1960, with the story of Lois Rabinowitz, a secretary who happened to wear slacks to pay a ticket for her boss, and found herself chided by the judge for disrespect. "When Everything Changed" grabs your almost certainly pantsed self right there, and makes you promise to give the book to all the young women in your life this holiday season. It closes with the so-called Year of the Woman, 2008, when Clinton and Palin cracked part of the glass ceiling for women in politics, but left plenty more for women to come, if they dare.

Looking over Collins' dizzying panorama, it's hard to believe women moved so far so fast, and still remain so far from full equality. I talked to Collins about why she thought she started the book the same year the terrific writers of "Mad Men" began their series. Short answer: the pill. Longer answer: Well, watch it.

We talked about how rare it is to see the struggles, and different priorities, of black, working-class and other non-white women depicted in a mainstream book on the women's movement:

I asked whether Collins felt like history was repeating itself in the 2008 Clinton vs. Obama Democratic Primary, in terms of feminists fighting with advocates of racial equality over who got to go first, black men or (mostly white) women:

Finally, in the lightning round: Is Sarah Palin a feminist? Which was more influential, "The Feminine Mystique" or "Sex and the Single Girl"? The biggest feminist legislative defeat: ERA or Comprehensive Child Development Act? And why Billie Jean King is an underappreciated feminist hero:

And there's a lot to criticize, particularly on the eve of a planned speech Tuesday in which he's reportedly going to try to sell an Afghanistan escalation -- at least 30,000 more troops -- as an exit strategy. Glenn Greenwald has laid out Obama's civil liberties transgressions, and the way he's reversed campaign promises and backed Bush-Cheney policies on rendition, military commissions and government secrecy. Like Huffington, I'm alarmed that the White House seems to be dismissing the need for a second stimulus to deal with what appears to be a "jobless recovery," while also sending word that reducing the deficit is a pressing priority (which is crazy in an ongoing recession).

But using Katrina as a point of comparison is excessive. Katrina was an example of government incompetence and indifference, all at once. Obama is neither incompetent nor indifferent. He is a centrist Democrat, one who brought in a record amount of Wall Street money during the campaign and, not surprisingly, a whole lot of Wall Street veterans with him into the White House. I find that many progressives who jumped on the Obama bandwagon early, selling him as the progressive candidate in the race contrasted with corporate sellout Hillary Clinton, are, like Huffington, among the most disappointed by the president. I was an Obama admirer but a skeptic, and I find I'm less chagrined about the ways he falls short of my ideals than the folks who swooned for him early.

The two most interesting pieces I've read on Obama's troubles this week avoid rhetorical excess and raise more questions than answers, but I recommend them anyway. On Salon, Michael Lind asked "Can Populism Be Liberal?" and answered, maybe: But not as long as the Democrats are the party of Goldman Sachs. Like Huffington, he argues that Obama needs to focus on jobs to keep populist anger from being channeled by the opportunistic, solutions-free GOP. If you missed it, read it over this long weekend.

In his New Yorker blog, George Packer examined Obama's declining popularity and rising troubles at home and abroad, and, like me, argues that part of Obama's problem is the unrealistic expectations of many enthusiasts.  Packer adds this troubling observation:

The Obama movement was unlike other social movements because it began and ended with a person, not an issue. And it was unlike ordinary political coalitions because it didn’t have the organizational muscle of voting blocs. The difficulty in sustaining its intensity through the inevitable ups and downs of governing shows the vulnerability in this model of twenty-first-century, Internet-based politics.

Certainly Arianna Huffington didn't share an agenda with neoconservative Ken Adelman -- but both endorsed Obama. Looking back on the unlikely coalition Obama assembled, at least partly because of the nation's economic collapse and the incompetence and corruption of the Bush administration, it shouldn't be surprising that he began to lose support once he had to actually govern.

I'm a little more patient with Obama because I never saw him as the great left hope, but I agree with liberal critics who want the president to deliver on Democratic ideals and focus on the many casualties of the economy. It's funny but with a Democrat in the White House, Matt Drudge is trumpeting what liberals have always talked about as the "real" unemployment rate -- the unemployed plus the underemployed and those who've given up finding work -- and it's over 17 percent. A third of all African-American men are jobless. Let's welcome the right's sudden focus on the casualties of the economy, and challenge them to come up with solutions. They won't, but Obama can and should.

On this Thanksgiving, I remain grateful Obama is in the White House. I'm thankful Dick Cheney is flapping his gums as a private citizen, not the most powerful man in the world. I believe in Obama's intelligence and decency. Like a lot of liberals, I believe he shares "our" values; I've just never been entirely sure he has either the political courage or savvy it takes to act on them, quite yet.

The real challenge is to show Obama and other shaky Democrats that there are political rewards for representing the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Too many politically conflicting interests got to say they elected Obama, and too many progressives jumped too soon to claim him as our own, without asking him to prove it. There's a lot of work left to do to save this country. Have a great holiday, and then let's get back to doing the work. 

UPDATE: Yes, I've corrected this piece to note that Beck wants to march on Washington 47 years to the day after King's march. It said 37 years before. Because if it was 47 years, that would make me 51, and I can't really be that old, can I? Also wanted to add another must read: John B. Judis's "Case for Deficit Spending" in The New Republic. Add Judis to the list of people befuddled by the Obama administration's insistence it will soon push deficit reduction.