loyal Democrats a distant third. And it will prove that the Democratic Party is institutionally incapable of delivering on its most significant promises.

You have to assume that on some level Congress understands this " which is why you also have to assume that some kind of legislation will eventually pass.

If it doesn’t, President Obama will have been defeated. But it’s the party, not the president, that will have failed.

OK, I get the point. He’s damning Obama with the faint praise due a cipher while mocking the Dems’ inability to govern. As he says, health care is their signature issue. And as we’ve observed previously, they have trouble advancing anything they feel deeply about that doesn’t involve a lot of pork. But cipher or not, Obama is also the president of a one-party government, and if his party can’t govern, he doesn’t get off that easy. He still gets to be a failure and is the one who will ultimately wear it.

Never mind. The good news is that the amorphous blob of health-care reform that Obama was pushing appears to be going down the drain, and if he wants to be successful at all with this or anything else, he may have to come up with something that makes sense.

Welcome Punditeers, etal. Always so good to see you. In other failure-mongering developments this morning, we’re looking at Afghanistan and asking Obama to Be All You Can Be.

And the Republicans helped LBJ win the election. Go figure.