Like it or not, Barak Obama is the most important tool in the Progressive's kit. Might as well use him -- complaining gets us nowhere. And circumstances have dropped an opportunity in our laps.
Obama is so committed to health-care reform that a defeat would cripple him in the most humiliatingly public way, but the path he chose has become boulder-blocked and overgrown with brambles. Progressives can get him out of there by passing a Medicare-for-everybody bill through reconciliation. It wouldn't be a new program, merely an expansion of an existing one, so reconciliation is perfectly appropriate. It would automatically eliminate, without even mentioning them, two of the abuses about which the President has spoken with greatest indignation: The pre-existing-condition trick, and arbitrary withdrawal of coverage. Universal, single-payer health care that Senators and representatives can campaign on in 2010, Obama in 2012. A year ago he wouldn't have given it a second glance, but it will save him now, and he'll have the Progressives to thank. Don't ask his permission; pass it, put it on his desk. Of course he'll sign it. He may have to ask Rahm to leave the room.