Unfortunately, this could be one of those bogus stories that the media help turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can't watch cable news lately without some mainstream commentator hyping the infighting among progressives, usually in superficial and inflammatory terms. Chris Matthews described netroots opponents of the healthcare compromise as folks who "get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching." CNBC's John Harwood told them to stop taking "hallucinogenic drugs," and Time's Joe Klein exhorted them (once again) to "grow up." From the other side, MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan blasted liberal reform-bill backer Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schulz so hard he had to apologize to her, and Keith Olbermann promised to go to jail rather than buy insurance as the bill would mandate.

Even as progressives engage in an important and fascinating debate over strategy and policy regarding the healthcare reform compromise likely to pass the Senate, it's being covered as a clash of personalities: the "netroots/nutroots" vs. the pragmatists; the wonks vs. the activists, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake vs. the Washington Post's Ezra Klein.

Of course, a few people on the netroots left have pushed their own specious story lines, comparing the sides in this debate to 2002's liberal split over the Iraq war. As someone who passionately opposed the war (to MSM ridicule) and thinks the coming healthcare reform compromise, while disappointing, is a deal worth making, I reject simplistic lefty schematics.

If you can only read one thing about this debate, read Glenn Greenwald's breakdown of the real fissures the bill is exposing within the party (where he finds merit in Jake McIntyre's 2002 Iraq vs. 2009 HCR positions). There is a genuine and justified concern among progressives that this bill enshrines an alarming corporatist Democrat view of "reform": Make nominally liberal social-service expansions safe for the private sector. That is absolutely what is going on.

But that's as far as the Democrats and the progressive movement have taken us to date. We have a lot more work to do. In my opinion, left and center Democrats need to compromise now, make good on their campaign promise to pass the bill and insure millions more people. And then progressives need to challenge the corporatist pillars of the party in rhetoric, legislation, and in elections, in 2010 and 2012, and beyond.

That's why when it comes to the current healthcare reform bill, I'm with the bill's opponents in the long term, and its liberal supporters in the short term. In the long term, I think the work progressives have done pushing for the public option has already made the bill a better bill. They will likely get more good policy provisions in conference committee. But their opposition is also crucial as a long-term organizing, party-development strategy. It's profoundly frustrating that there's no one on the left who has the clout of Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Aetna, or Ben Nelson, D-Mutual of Omaha. Without being willing to walk away from the table, it's hard to convince the other side you mean business. I understand why some progressives are still demanding that congressional liberals leave the table if the Senate compromise is the only play possible.

I made this point throughout the summer, when liberals like Newsweek's Jon Alter, along with Matthews, were arguing that the left should surrender the public option immediately to ensure the passage of other healthcare reforms. As I said at the time, I don't know who taught those guys to play poker. If you give up on your ideals six months before the final vote, you can't expect to get much from last-minute negotiations.

I'm aware I'm violating my own rules by starting to publicly cast my lot with the backers of compromise. But I'm doing so to ensure there isn't a self-destructive rush to declare the bill wholly evil on the left. I have said it before: I'm disturbed by the stampede to abandon President Obama, and the Democratic Party, by people who sold Obama as the only progressive choice in 2008 -- people like my friends Tom Hayden and Arianna Huffington. Occasionally, I'm tempted, like the self-congratulatory folks who want to superimpose the divisions over the Iraq war, to do the same thing with the 2008 primary -- except Jane Hamsher and I were on the same side back then: on the side of staying neutral and not anointing one candidate the only progressive choice. And Taylor Marsh, who backed Clinton, opposes the likely compromise bill. So there are no simple, let alone simplistic, ways to think about this compromise.

I do believe that the lefties who bought or sold the idea that Obama was the only true progressive in '08 bear a special burden for the current disillusionment among Democrats. Obama mostly campaigned as a centrist Democrat; it was exciting (and a valid reason to prefer him) to have our first African-American nominee, but it wasn't the coming of social democracy in the U.S. I think people who sold Obama that way will be helping to dig progressives out of a ditch for years to come. It would have been great if both leading Democrats had to fight for progressive votes, but a lot of leading progressives bullied Clinton supporters and bowed to Obama prematurely.  

But one person bears a much bigger burden for this confusion than Obama propagandists, and that's Obama himself. He's breaking two campaign promises by backing this bill: He (wrongly, in my opinion) opposed the individual mandate in 2008, while correctly backing the public option. Now he's selling out on both. The latest insult is the president telling the Washington Post on Tuesday: "I didn't campaign on the public option," when in fact it was a staple of  his policy papers and Web platform.  It's an astonishing statement. His supporters are right to chastise Obama. But I don't think defeating the likely compromise is a smart way to do it.

Obama's disappointing failure to push the public option aside, I think Democrats should back the bill. For one thing, the party has to start delivering on its promises.  I agree with Tom Harkin: The likely bill (there is still no actual bill) establishes healthcare as a right, not a privilege. It expands Medicaid to at least 17 million currently uninsured Americans, and grants subsidies to many millions, perhaps 10 million, more. It makes insurance companies pay out 80-85 percent of premium dollars on care. State exchanges may also be able to accomplish something close to a public option (although that is still not clear). And while the individual mandate (and accompanying fines) is of concern without a public option, Jonathan Cohn lays out how much families from 100 to 300 percent of the poverty line will be helped by the bill, and it's extraordinary. Finally, there is no universal healthcare without a universal, individual mandate. So the progressives who are trying to sell that as the lefty "compromise" are wrong.

So, yes, I expect I will support the compromise that emerges from the House-Senate conference committee. I hope House progressives get more concessions -- more and higher subsidies for working- and middle-class Americans, more incentives for insurance companies to compete and lower costs. But in the end, I'm with Harkin and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders: This bill helps tens of millions of people. It moves us down the road to a genuine and legitimate public health infrastructure. It can also convince people on the fence that Democrats deliver on their promises.

But I won't participate in demonizing the bill's progressive opponents. We will need one another later on. I think the would-be so-called bill-killers are wrong -- but they're not evil, juvenile, self-destructive, solipsistic or any of the other epithets thrown around mainly by lifetime centrist Democratic apologists. They are the people who are trying to stake out a left-wing frontier to balance the likes of Lieberman, Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu, and all the Blue Dog Democrats in the House. The MSM -- and some offices in the White House -- still chuckle at the insurgent left, especially the netroots, as immature and impotent. That's a great way to encourage compromise, by the way. To the extent anyone who wants this bill to pass is still peddling this pernicious point of view, they might want to stop it.

Ultimately, I believe liberals aren't convincing when they threaten to pull a Lieberman and kill this bill, because everyone knows they care about people too much. It's a classic Solomonic choice: Put Medicare expansion or the public option in the bill, and Lieberman will kill it, because he killed his conscience long ago. Give Bernie Sanders $25 million in community healthcare clinics, as well as Medicaid or subsidies to get 20-plus million Americans healthcare -- even without a public option -- and Sanders is going to see the real human beings really helped by real healthcare. He's not going to hold out for ideological principle, and everybody knows that.

And, sure, it's hard to for liberal Democrats to negotiate with those who are making this all about ideology. But it's easier to sleep at night. This bill, if it passes, is not the end, but a beginning. I want it to pass, but I respect those who come down on the other side.

Yet the media spent a lot of time chasing non-stories, from Balloon Boy to Sarah Palin's death panels -- so much so that Salon felt compelled to call out the top Bogus Stories of 2009. You can find them here.

Why did so many news organizations, from old media and new, chase silly, shiny distractions? Mainly because it's easier than reporting out, and attracting readers to, big questions of politics and public policy. Right now, for instance, even as progressives engage in substantive debate over tactics, strategy and policy in the healthcare reform compromise likely to pass the Senate, it's mainly covered as a clash of personalities: the "netroots/nutroots" vs. the pragmatists; the wonks vs. the activists, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake vs. the Washington Post's Ezra Klein. (I promise to follow this post with an examination of the two sides' arguments so that Salon doesn't merely ape the media we criticize!) Whether or not an excise tax on high-cost policies is progressive doesn't get as much attention.

When looking at the year's top bogus stories, we didn't only consider entirely false claims, like death panels. We included stories that had some truth at their core -- Climategate! -- but that got pickup and importance far beyond what the simple facts of the story rightfully earned. So check out Salon's list of the top 11 Bogus Stories of 2009 (we couldn't pick just 10!). Let us know if we missed any, or if you'd have picked a different No. 1, in my comments section, and I'll report back on my blog tomorrow (after substantively breaking down the healthcare reform battle, I promise). 

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After the segment, Franken communications director Casey Aden-Wansbury e-mailed me this:

"Hi Joan, I heard you got asked about Sen. Franken's exchange with Sen. Lieberman on Hardball just now and wanted to make sure you knew what really happened: Senate leadership has been asking all presiding officers to enforce the 10-minute rule for both sides and Senator Franken was simply following the direction of leadership. "

Duly noted. (Update: My friend Josh Marshall of TPM emails to remind me that Aden-Wansbury used to be communications director for...Joe Lieberman. Small world.) But it was still a profoundly satisfying moment. Thank you, Sen. Franken! Here's the Franken video, with a cameo by an outraged John McCain: 

Here are a few inspired choices that didn't make our list:

The teabaggers (Cuchulain2007)

No group this year operated on so little evidence, logic or rational thought; no group this year was so enmeshed in shooting itself in the foot at every turn; no group was so convinced that fiction was indeed fact; and no group exemplified the term "useful idiots" so well. Funded, provoked, encouraged and organized by right-wing millionaires and billionaires, this supposedly "populist" movement was against everything that could actually help the non-rich in America and for everything that could possibly help the fat cats pulling their strings. And within this group, those who carried weapons to health care rallies were the ne plus ultra of crazies.

The Salahis, (highlyunlikely)

Crazy: the way to become instantly infamous.

Joe Lieberman (DCJan)

For me, Lieberman is the craziest of them all! Three months ago he proposed for the buy-in medicare extension, and now he's against it. A crazy person certainly does say anything and everything ... and Joe Lieberman has to be crazy. Or is he merely a compulsive liar? But, aren't compulsive liars crazy, too?

John Edwards (teresa, dterrydraw, virtue001)

As for genuine crazy (and quite despite his having a rather famously LOT of money)? I'd nominate my neighbor, the former Senator John Edwards. He still doesn't seem to grasp how any-of-this could have happened to HIM, and did it really happen?... At the very least, Edwards has earned the "Most Deluded" & "What Were You THINKING?" awards for 2009.

--dterrydraw

Did we miss anyone? I should admit that I was nominated more than once, for many outrages, most notably being that I thought it possible to pick the No. 1 Crazy in a year like this. It was hard, I admit, but Glenn Beck made it kind of easy!

But I'm also worried about the left's rush to abandon the likely healthcare reform compromise. The fight isn't over; Senate progressives should try to get a better bill; if the likely disappointing bill passes, House progressives should fight like hell to get the public option and other measures to expand insurance and cut costs back into whatever bill is on the table.

However: I have seen a cavalcade of lefty surrender in the last two days, with people who ought to know better insisting it's time to defeat the Senate bill (which means the current proposals wouldn't go to conference, to be improved by the House) rather than compromise. And I really don't get it. On MSNBC's "The Ed Show" Tuesday, Arianna Huffington argued that progressives should kill the compromised Senate bill, and I ... well, I asked what that would accomplish. And I still don't know. Some of the complaints are starting to remind me of progressives who backed Ralph Nader in 2000, because there was no difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore. (Text continues after video, below): 

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I have been here on Salon since mid-summer, haranguing Obama and the Democrats to fight for meaningful reform and a robust public option. While few people were really paying attention, in July, I voiced my disappointment with Obama's failure to lay out core principles of his own healthcare reform plans. During the summer of "town hells," I repeated that lament; I think Obama's silence, rather than empowering his Democratic caucus, left them exposed and let the rowdy right define his bill with their own signature insanity: Socialist death panels and mandatory high school abortion clinics, here we come.

So Obama has much to answer for. But that's behind us. Now we have the reality of the already inadequate Senate bill needing 60 votes it won't get. And so we've got President Lieberman dictating the terms of the bill. It's disgraceful, when you look at what the Democratic base has voted for since 2006 (when Lieberman was forced to run as an independent when he lost the Democratic nomination).

I can get very stirred up by all of that. But I can also say this: The core provisions of the Senate bill -- expanding coverage to perhaps 30 million people; doing away with insurance company discrimination against those with preexisting conditions, preventing them from cruelly throwing the insured who suddenly need coverage off the rolls, and abolishing caps on insurance coverage (caps would seem to be the opposite of insurance) -- those are important accomplishments.

I admit: I'm afraid that building in an insurance mandate, but not any kind of public option that might bring down costs, could make this whole plan backfire. Maybe it will turn out to be a huge giveaway to the insurance companies, and taxpayers as well as the newly insured will rebel against Obama and the Democrats for passing it. That's a real worry. I have made that case myself in arguing for the public option over the last few months.

But I also can't look away from the possibility of helping insure another 30 million people and protecting a whole lot more from discrimination and abandonment when they need insurance most. This may be the best choice we get for a long time. And I have been challenging myself and other people to answer the question: Has there ever been a time liberals have defeated a basically liberal but disappointing set of reforms, only to be able to implement something more liberal later?

And I don't know of anything like that. When liberals and conservatives united to defeat President Nixon's guaranteed-income Family Assistance Plan, I know people like me thought they were doing the best they could to protect welfare families from possible encroachment on their benefits. But years later, a guaranteed income seems like socialism. That was before my time; but I also remember when electing Ronald Reagan, while disappointing, was going to herald an era of lefty rebellion; but that never happened either; we got George H.W. Bush and then Bill Clinton's accommodating triangulation, which hid his social democratic aspirations so well that no one could find them. And after the defeat of Clinton's healthcare reform efforts, Democrats came back even more timid this time around -- 15 years later.

I'm also not convinced by arguments that Democrats can kill the bill, and then use the failure of healthcare reform in 2010 against the Republicans. They have shown no capacity to hang the GOP with "the party of no" label it deserves. Instead, after holding the White House and Congress for the first time in almost a generation, they will have shown themselves unable to pass meaningful reform. People can argue to kill the bill on its merits, but don't try to argue that it's good politics. Obama will look like a failure.

Make no mistake: Obama is caving to Blue Dog Democrats, Joe Lieberman and the insurance lobby. But if you don't like that, then go into the districts of those faux-Democrats and work against them. Work harder for campaign finance reform. Start thinking about getting behind a genuinely progressive primary opponent for the president in 2012. (I think it's too early for that myself.) And for now, continue to lobby Congress to improve this bill. But vain boasts about how progressives can kill the bill, start over, and blame Republicans for the failure to pass reform are not convincing.

One footnote on the video: I was a little too hard on Howard Dean. I believe he's approaching this with integrity, and he may be right about a bad bill being worse than no bill at all. I still see a little bit of the Dean/Rahm Emanuel feud at work here, though, and I'm not ready for the Democrats to round up the circular firing squad quite yet. 

But if 2009 was a year of big news, it also was most notably the year of Big Crazy. From Birthers to death panels, 9/11 Truthers to evolution deniers, it was hard to get through a week without stepping in a steaming pile of just-plain-nuts. So let Time magazine come up with its dutiful "Person of the Year," working harder each December to delight, confound, disgust or simply bore us. Salon decided to live up to the news environment of 2009 and to round up the Year in Crazy -- -- documenting the people responsible for the craziest behavior of the year.

It was very hard (in fact, we're still mulling our top pick). There's so much crazy to choose from. Then there's a whole lot of shiny, vexing and perplexing faux-crazy. Bill O'Reilly certainly went loony during his tête-à-tête with me in June, but a certain kind of authoritarian, bad-daddy nuttiness is O'Reilly's reliable shtick; none of us knows what the Fox host really believes, except that he loves his big paycheck and getting to humiliate people. We think O'Reilly is vile, but overheated as he sometimes gets, we don't think he's crazy. Same with Rush Limbaugh. His "anal poisoning" obsession aside, Limbaugh is sane enough to keep making millions and to stay in the right-wing "telling it like it is" media mainstream.

Similarly, someone like Liz Cheney -- awful but not crazy -- could casually suggest that insane Birther theories made sense because "people are uncomfortable with having, for the first time ever ... a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas." Sarah Palin, who's wacky and destructive but not crazy, except like a fox, went a little bit crazy on Facebook, warning that Obama's healthcare reform would create "death panels" to kill her elderly parents and her child with Down syndrome. O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Cheney and Palin all display behavior that's better described as brazenly opportunistic than crazy.

It went over so well that folks like Chuck Grassley and Newt Gingrich rode the crazy train for a while, defending Palin's lies. Crazy became so influential this year that the New York Times finally assigned someone to the Right-Wing Crazy beat, asking reporters and editors to watch Fox News and track the mutterings of O'Reilly and Glenn Beck and Limbaugh and the echo chamber of crazy, after the paper of record was taken by surprise by the epidemic of lethal lunacy in the Birther controversies and "town hells" this summer, and failed to cover Fox's crusade to topple White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones. (The New York Times is crazy to listen to right-wing bullies, but we're only talking about individual crazy behavior here.)

We're not sure what explains the sudden explosion of crazy. Is it deep, destabilizing economic insecurity? The looming 2012 apocalypse? Having a black president? No one knows for sure. All we know is that within the GOP's base, and on certain frontiers of the left, as well as the wacky-science crowd, crazy is hot this year. Crazy sells. It's the year of crazy liberation! Say it loud, I'm nuts and proud.

So over the next few days we'll honor 10 people from the Year in Crazy. Leave your nominations and votes in our letters section, and you could help us pick our No. 1. Meanwhile, hold on to your sanity, because we think it's coming back strong in the next few years. We've been trying to popularize a few catchphrases -- Sanity: It's patriotic! Sanity: Just do it! Sanity: It's not just for breakfast anymore! -- and you can add a few of your own in comments, too.

But the crazy will be here all week, trying to reassure you in this holiday season that you're not alone: All of our families look downright sane compared to the cavalcade of crazy we endured this year.

Crazy as it sounds, it might also be true.

American Prospect co-editor (and Clinton administration health policy advisor) Paul Starr kicked off this line of reasoning in the New York Times Nov. 28. "Liberals should be prepared to give up what is now a mere symbol for changes in the bill that would deliver affordable insurance more effectively and quickly to the millions of Americans who desperately need it," Starr wrote. Starr's preferred changes included moving up the bill's start date from 2014 to asap -- which is practically and politically smart -- and establishing federal "regulatory authority to prevent insurers from engaging in abusive practices and subverting the new rules" that prevent discrimination based on age and preexisting conditions. Those were great ideas but they should have come along with a public option, not instead of one.

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: