See, the thing is that I think the majority of these critiques on point.  Not sure what you want here.  I cannot disavow Obama as my messiah, because like most of us you label "fanboys," I never saw him as such.  Not only is this like demanding of an observant Jew that they disavow the divinity of Christ, in my case it's exactly like that as I have been an observant Jew most of my life and have never accepted Christ.  On the other hand, there is much in the history of Christian thought to admire.  Much of my dissertation has to do with early modern applications of Christ's prophecy of Jerusalem's destruction in Luke 19 to London.  Does that make me one of JC's fanboys?  

You want a show of regret that I should have backed Hillary?  I'd back Hillary in many situations.  I would have supported her campaign enthusiastically had she won the nomination.  But I think your arguments that she would have been better are at best conjectural.  I think it likely that she would have been better in some ways and not as good in others.  That position describes the majority of your readers here.  But beyond that, it's totally irrelevant at this point.  I'm not going to apologize that Obama has been a bit more imperfect than I expected and I'm not going to concede a hypothetical and irrelevant point that HRC would have been better on all counts.  So the reason people read your diaries as PUMA troll posts is that it's not clear to me and to many others what you actually are trying to accomplish.  The health care bill is crap.  You claim it's not going to pass anyway, so why are we debating it?  I would support the passage of bad legislation that creates more opportunity for improvement down the road than killing it does.  And that's a hard judgment to make.  But again, in your eyes the question is moot.

So what do you want besides to taunt and yell at people?  You want to primary Obama?  A bit premature to say the least.  You want to primary him with Harkin?  Count me out.  Harkin's a fine fine man.  He might even make a fine president.  But primarying Obama with Harkin in 2012 seems likely to ensure a Republican administration.  That seems, to me, like the politics of catastrophe.  I have 2 and will soon have 3 children.  I don't have the leisure of quixotic purity.  

So what do you want?  You want to pay be back for mistreating Clinton supporters during the primaries?  I never did.  I will not accept that lie.  

You want me to defend a bill that is extremely flawed, while good progressives from Krugman to Harkin to Wyden still support its passage?  I won't, and I will take their perspectives into account along with Anthony Weiner's.  You want me to defend Obama on this issue when I have concurred from the beginning that I think he bears real responsibility for this situation?  Why would I do that?  You want me to join your crusade to demonize him and pick fights with others who remain more enthusiastic about him?  What would that accomplish?

Obama has always required a strong left flank.  This was true of every democratic president this century.  I don't see how these diaries and comments serve that goal.

No one has a right to ask you to stay off this blog and you have no right to demand than anyone stay away from your diaries.  That's simply how it works.

How sweet.  You've found a friend.

I'll say it once more here.  You're a liar.  Sorry the truth hurts you.  But its an issue of definition now.  You asserted as fact a thing you know untrue.  I called you on it, and now you're the victim.  You claimed that I attacked Clinton supporters venomously during the primaries. It's patently false.  Hence, you lie.  Furthermore, you qualify as a liar.

But again, enjoy one another's company.

Like I said my advice is to ignore them. I have never seen an interaction end well with them. They are here to derail. That's the advice i was given in an exchange by a front pager who had to contend with the behavior. If and until Jerome decides to ban them or sets up rules to address their behavior,they will continue to act like jerkwads. My guess is that some of them are paid shills, but that's just a guess.

Al Giordano has also come out against "Kill the Bill" progressives and gave a fairly decent smack down to both Dean and Taibbi.

Oooo! She speaks French!

I was who I am now--slynch.  I moved from dkos during the primary, because I thought the tone there became very anti-Hillary/pro-Obama, and I wasn't convinced that Obama was the best candidate.  I voted for Obama, nonetheless, in the general, because, from my view, I will/have (almost) always vote(d) for a Democrat.  

But, I've been thusfar troubled by Obama's performance.  I don't see him as progressive (nor did I see Hillary as progresive; I just disagreed with the ridiculous Obama-worship I saw at dkos that eventually trickled-down here).

In my view, we're getting what we voted for.  It's unfortunate that the Democrats just can't seem to put forward a truly progressive candidate.  I don't think Hillary would've been that person either, but I certainly don't think it should come as a massive shock that Obama isn't that person.  He never professed to be a liberal.  Ironically, WE are "suffering" the same sort of buyer's remorse that the far right wing suffers every time they get behind a contender they think is going to represent their ridiculous right wing religious views.  It just doesn't happen.

to be clear:  I always have voted for a Democrat, in every office I've voted for.  And, I expect I always will.  I'm very much on the left wing of things.  I am just disgusted, frankly, that even the "democratic wing of the democratic party" tends to be awfully moderate.  Count me in Bernie Sanders' camp.

I agree that this is the most likely interpretation.  I think Obama would be very happy with a public option and ultimately buys the arguments for how it would reduce costs.  But I think from the get go he's been completely comfortable living without it.  This is where his pragmatic minimalism trumps his vision, and he's always combined both tendencies in how he approaches issues and in how he presents himself.  Given that I think the public option crucial (like most of us) as well as drug reimportation, I am frustrated that he was too minimalist to push harder.  

There was a New Yorker piece a while back that suggested that Obama will succeed with health care to the degree that he successfully casts it in terms of values.  I think he's capable of doing this, but chose not to because of his minimalist disposition and not because he can be reduced to a sellout corporate shill.  It's due to his burkean respect for traditional institutions, which has been evident from his first forays onto the national stage.  But just as Reagan cast Milton Friedman's anti-Keynesianism in terms that resonated with simple American "values," Obama has the capacity to do the same with the public option.  He has the rhetorical skills to point out the dissonance of anti-wealth-redistribution red state republicans who spend all their energy redistributing tax revenues into their communities.  He could try to shift the terms of the debate.  It's this ability that lead me to prefer him.  He chooses not to do this.  The question is not what this president is guilty of or what he is innocent of.  I consider these beside the point.  It's a question of what he is capable of and how to push him to try.  That requires a left flank that doesn't simply grab the opportunity of every setback to re-prosecute the battles of the past.  FDR was no social democrat and LBJ no civil rights crusader.  But they had better organized and broader left flanks to pull them to harness their capacities for progressive goals.  We cannot switch the president and it's not clear what we would gain if we did.  But he has talents we need to try to activate on behalf of our goals.  

We face an irresponsible and entrenched right-wing opposition that would sacrifice everything that is good about this country and about their own lives to defeat its political opponents.  The reason Obama was always going to compromise more to the right than to the left is that the right would be perfectly happy with nothing.  This is why even Bernie Sanders will vote for the Senate bill.  Lieberman would be happy with nothing and celebrate it as a triumph.  We need to spend more energy on exposing them than on prosecuting and/or defending the president.

And it counts for a great deal in my book that many of the bill's most ardent critics urge its passage.  

As Krugman argues:

The reason to pass reform, even inadequate reform, now isn't to gain seats next year; it is to pass reform, which will do vast good, during the window that's available. If it doesn't pass now, it will probably be many nears before the next chance.

But back to Obama: the important thing to bear in mind is that this isn't about him; and, equally important, it isn't about you. If you've fallen out of love with a politician, well, so what? You should just keep working for the things you believe in.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12 20/the-wysiwyg-president#more-6157

We'll get nowhere if we keep making this about Obama's various merits and deficiencies.

And for PK's analysis of the cost controls in the bill, he argues that it's incrementally better than the status quo while expanding coverage here: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12 21/coverage-and-costs

It seems to me that if passing this bill gets us further than killing it.  So at this point, though I have been undecided up until now, I say pass it.  It's not the final victory.  Much is left to do and we've got to do a better job with making the arguments against the stop-everything right and do-nothing center.  What next?

It's kind a the same thing here.

Please produce one instance where I have impugned Hillary Clinton's honor or desist.  If you cannot and you continue, then you are the same kind of liar that ludwigvan is.  As for Palin, my issues with her have to do with her politics not her gender.  

Comparing Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin is certainly a way to impugn Clinton's honor.  I, for one, would NEVER lump them together.  But I am glad we agree that Clinton is someone to be admired.

Huh?

I supported Obama in the primaries as well as the general.