NP: John Cage, 4'33"

I've been coming across lots of year-end political overviews and, naturally, health care stories lately. They've coalesced into a bit of a narrative in my brain.

Steve Benen knocks down the "Democrats control all the levers, so they should be able to do whatever they want" meme. Yes, the GOP reliance on the filibuster and the fragmentation within the Democratic caucus are frustrating, but they exist, and you have to deal with them. For whatever reason, I feel like a lot of activists on the left are willfully oblivious to this. The President cannot be, and he hasn't.

So, in that context, how has Obama done in just under a year? Andrew Sullivan cites a Politifact chart that looks to quantify what promises Obama has kept versus those for which he's come up short. Part of the reason I think factions on the left get so bent out of shape is that they all have a different one of those promises that is very near and dear to their hearts, so if that's the one that didn't get fulfilled, or that's dragging out, it affects their perceptions disproportionately. It's not unlike that notion that a defender can play great for almost the entire game, but if he makes one mistake, it's all he'll be remembered for in that particular match. And Obama is playing in a bunch of games at once.

Taking that into account in his larger analysis -- looking at it as a tournament instead of a game, maybe? -- Sullivan lays out his case for all the things Obama has actually accomplished, and how the Beltway culture is so hopelessly tuned into minutiae that they'll never see it. And a reader helpfully points out that the self-immolation and possible marginalization of the Republicans can also be viewed as a plus. I think Andrew is mostly on the money, but I've always seen Obama as someone who understands how to grind out a win by not getting distracted from the end goal. I'll refrain from another sports/soccer analogy, but it's there if you want it.

On that note, Ezra Klein points out how this Senate health care bill is really close to what Obama pushed from the get-go. A lot is being made of the President's defense that he "never" campaigned for the public option, but he pretty clearly downplayed it once the actual legislation got moving. The bigger point is that it was never the centerpiece of reform, regardless of what the netroots might claim.

Speaking of which, if Howard Dean can get behind the Senate bill because the Republicans don't like it, I feel like I can support it because it's made Jane Hamsher completely apoplectic. The firedoglake blogger seems to have gone off the deep end on this one, and it's become a bit painful to watch. Personally, I don't get why everything has to be exactly right on the first try, and I think that the path to a better bill is through the existing bill, and not through a complete reboot, particularly in this increasingly toxic environment.

So, what's the deal with the netroots, anyway? Nate Silver wants some of them to explain why they think this bill is worse than the status quo, but he's also conceded in an earlier post that "while the very nature of last-minute negotiations makes it hard to draw straight lines from point A to point B, it seems likely that if the kill-billers had not pushed back so hard against Lieberman, the bill would have been worse -- maybe much worse." So, if the "kill the bill" crowd understands that, wouldn't admitting that they just want this bill to improve be exposing their bluff? Shouldn't Silver, as such an avid poker player, get that? Maybe Hamsher is just a really good actress.