It has been made clear, I believe, that the major impediment to enacting 'single payer,' or even a 'public option,' to end the wars, to reassert civil liberties, or to create jobs here instead of healthy financial institutions, is not the Republicans, but the deep divide between corporate politicians like Obama and the Left.

Whereas corporations are for killing and hence the wars, they are for torture, and hence the trashing of rights presumed to us since the Magna Carta, and for stealing, and so the bailing out of the banks and the corporations with tax money, and the left is against killing, torturing, and stealing, there's a big conflict.

Where's the compromise going to be between killing and not killing, or torturing and not, or stealing and not?

I think it's now apparent that Obama, so long as he continues along his present course, is a one term President. The disappointment on the Left will force Obama to throw it some kind of bone to get their support in any of the up-coming elections. Corporations will see that and realize that support for Republicans will be more attractive because getting them elected will not involve any such additional costs. The Republicans don't have anyone to the Left in their party and the rest think business can do no wrong. So, no matter what Obama does, if it "gives in" to the Left, or caves to the Corporations, his faction will lose.

One response for Obama that might give him a strategy would be to join with the Left instead of keeping it at bay and attack the idea that what's good for finance or business must be good for the country. For the economy to become profitable for the people who work here again, we have to show that such an improvement cannot come about if we continue to favor the profitability of multinational corporations and financial institutions.

I'd say, if he's going to take a stand and lose on something, stand on 'single payer' and let the Corporations support the Republicans. It's not clear that all Corporations would go with Republicans, or 'blue' Democrats. Many would benefit from having their health insurance unshackled from their businesses.

I have wondered whether some of the skepticism about Obama's 'public option' and government programs under Democrats in general comes out of their experience with what Bush did once he got into office.

It would strike me that they saw his cult and expansion of government programs, like Homeland security, as proof that whomever gets into office is corrupt or corruptable.

When the Left says that the country needs a government run or financed health care system, maybe the 'grassroots' right can only see Bush and how such a program, even if created with the best of intensions, as a great thing to be taken over by health insurance and pharma companies and run for their profit.

Maybe they are more savy about what politicians would do to a big program than the Lefties.

The Left and others who promote 'single payer' or some 'public option' say it will do this, that, or the other thing, but the movement cannot vouch for whatever the politicians controlled by the corporations will actually do.

I think the Left has to answer this argument in some way.

I thought the destruction of the Soviet Union and the Marxist ideology that supported it failed, according to the pundits, because, one, the Soviet Union could not keep it's economy going, and two, people could not be made to go along with Marxism anymore because of the first reason.

I suspect the Media Stars, as well as the political planners, in general, think the country is on the verge of, one, having its economy fail, along with the support it has been to the military-industrial folks, in the health care insurance and drug businesses, and so on.

The basic idea is that they want to make the argument that they were right to support any measure that works to keep the business going.

If Broder or the others say, "No, no no. Everything is fine," it's not so much to defend torture, or allowing elites to break the law. They don't see that as what they are doing. They don't put their arguments together that way. All they see is the overwhelming need to make sure people don't see the cracks in the system.

They want you to be reassured that the Emperor does have clothes.

Won't pointing out that the Emporer really doesn't have any clothes, instead of making them see the nakedness, just force them to work that much harder to keep up the illusion?