THE STENCH OF VICTORY:

Um, Pathetic (Hendrik Hertzberg January 11, 2010 , The New Yorker)

[I]nontrivial portion (though far from a majority) of the Democratic left, particularly its Internet cohort, feels alienated and disappointed, with the bill and with the President. As the Senate vote neared, Markos Moulitsas, the chief of Daily Kos, sent his followers a tweet: “Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate.” MoveOn.org called on “progressives” to “block this bill.” Arianna Huffington dismissed it as “reform in name only.” Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s Savonarola, lectured the President that he was about to consign his countrymen to a “Chicago stockyards of insurance” that would be “immoral and a betrayal of the people who elected you.” Even Dr. Dean himself—Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, Presidential candidate, and Democratic Party chairman—wrote that the Senate should defeat the bill, claiming that it “would do more harm than good to the future of America.” And in the nether reaches of the left blogosphere the epithets flew. Obama is a “sellout.” He’s a “liar.” He’s a “Judas,” a “fraud,” a “corrupt fool.” He’s a “Liebermanite.” (Ouch!) He’s “an Uncle Tom groveling before the demands of the corporations that are running our country.” (This last not from some anonymous blog commenter but from Ralph Nader, without whose efforts Joe Lieberman would be just another former Vice-President.)