THE SENATE IS VOTING today on the President's compromise with Republicans.
(This post isn't an attack on Obama.)
The fact that this is happening is just a single example of a disturbing long-term trend.
(When you get to the end, you'll see.)
Obama complained, when progressives criticized his unilateral cave-in, that this was just health-care all over again.
A wonderful health-care reform was passed—something Democrats had been trying to do for years, he said—and still liberals were complaining because it "didn't include a public option".
He's right. It is just like health-care reform.
But, unfortunately, not in the way he intended.
When the Democrats tackled health-care reform, the country was ready for dramatic change.
A few progressives would have liked to hold out for one extreme—socialized medicine: a system in which all medical care was run by the national government.
More progressives would have been happy with a mixed system of private and state-run care.
But Americans on the whole were ready for a true compromise—something like "Medicare for Everybody": a system of government insurance that allowed the private sector to deliver the actual services.
Republicans, on the other hand, wanted the opposite extreme—what the big corporations wanted: business as usual.
Obama started the discussion to the right of what most Americans wanted: ruling out Medicare for Everybody and proposing a mostly private insurance system, which would leave most Americans with what they already had—almost exactly what Republicans were after.
Basically, it was an attempt to save the existing system.
The only concession to what the American people actually wanted was the public option: the right to opt into a Medicare-like system if the private systems wouldn't take you, or couldn't do the job you needed.
That's where he began the discussion—far to the right of the American people.
And what were the results?
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Did it keep Republicans from calling him a socialist?
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Did it get Republicans to stop filibustering every bill the Democrats introduced?
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Did it keep them from demanding further compromises?
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Did it win the midterm elections for Democrats?
By the end of the process, the bill included major Republican modifications, and they still didn't vote for it.
By the time it was passed it didn't even contain the public option—which Obama himself had said was essential to the plan.
And now, a federal district judge has just ruled that even without the public option another core part of the reform—the requirement that most people have health insurance—is unconstitutional.
So it's going to the Supreme Court.
This is what you get when one side is anxious to compromise and the other side absolutely refuses to compromise.
This is what you get when one party is financed by wealthy and powerful interests specifically not to compromise.
It's what Republicans are there for.
Today's struggle over tax breaks for the wealthy—which the average American will pay for, one way or another—is, as Obama has said, just another example of the same thing.
Barack Obama has been an excellent president in many, many ways.
But he needs to understand that the central issue in the long game is whether we have a Democrat in the White House, and a Democratic Congress, in 2013.
Because, if we don't, any gains that were made during his administration will be temporary—especially if they have been watered down before the compromises even began.
I know he has said that he is willing to be a one-term president.
But he should ask himself whether the people who voted for him are okay with that.
At least, that's what I think today.
