Since it is unlikely Obama is going to achieve any new major accomplishments with a Republican House, or pass any improvements to health care that could make the law more popular, he is going to have the unenviable task of running for re-election with his biggest achievement unpopular and slowly leaking support.

Can Republicans successfully exploit voters anger about the health care law in 2012 like they did in 2010 if large parts of the electorate thinks the law is already gone?

I know this is often hard for professional politicians and political aides to comprehend, but regular Americans really don’t pay attention to abstract congressional maneuvers. If the Senate Democratic caucus thinks reforming Senate rules is a good thing that would eventually will lead to better policy outcomes, they should implement them. If they don’t think it will, they shouldn’t make the change. But what definitely shouldn’t be part of their decision making process is any concern that slightly modifying the rule could cause a broad political backlash. There simply won’t be any.

In an act of extreme political malfeasance, Obama made the focus of his health care push “bending the cost curve” and good CBO scores. To create the illusion of savings, they delayed the lion’s share of benefits for years. At the same time, to appease the corporatists, they did nothing to help reduce Americans’ health care costs in the short term.

In honor of Steve Rattner’s revelation that Rahm Emanuel wandered around during the auto bailout saying “fuck the UAW,” I’ve renamed the “Cadillac tax” the “Fuck the UAW” tax.

Enthusiasm for the new health care law is trending down, a poll shows. It’s hard to stay excited about a plan that doesn’t take effect until 2014.

I’ve said many times that it’s impossible to expect progressive members of Congress to hold together if they don’t have the backing of their natural fiscal constituencies — the liberal interest groups and the unions. Without that support, they’re left to raise money from PACS and other corporate sources to sufficiently fund their campaigns. That’s why they take turns championing progressive bills that ultimately fail so they can pretend they do something, and then voting for bad bills that ultimately pass so someone else can be the failed hero. When Tammy Baldwin votes for one PhRMA-friendly bill after another, progressives can say “hey, but she’s so good on LGBT issues!” Which never actually pass either, but the kabuki keeps activists sufficiently docile and donating to large organizations who fundraise off amping up outrage.

But it’s also worthy to note that it’s hard for them to withstand the assault of liberal “pundits” who sneeringly derided their efforts as naive, futile and “purist.” They should be proudly taking credit for their role in delegitimizing progressive opposition to the bill in liberal intellectual circles, much the same role that the same people played during the Iraq war.

I think the single greatest political disaster in store for Democrats over the issue of health care reform is not about policy, mandates, or taxes; it is about time. Americans for the most part do not know that they will be forced to wait for three years before reform really starts. A recent Kaiser Family [...]