The Myth of 11-Dimensional Chess.

“Obama supporters are eager to depict the White House as nothing more than a helpless victim in all of this — the President so deeply wanted a more progressive bill but was sadly thwarted in his noble efforts by those inhumane, corrupt Congressional ‘centrists.’ Right. The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives. The administration is getting the bill which they, more or less, wanted from the start — the one that is a huge boon to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry.“

A day after Senate Democrats kill Byron Dorgan’s non-importation amendment in order to preserve the administration’s back-door deal with Big Pharma, the indispensable Glenn Greenwald takes the Obama administration to task for the final Senate product on health care, which, suffice to say, is looking pretty far afield from the House bill. (And all the while, the bought and paid for Joe Lieberman grins like the Cheshire Cat.)

I was going to wait until year-in-review post week to put this up, but now’s as good a time as any: From civil liberties to this Senate health care fiasco, it’s hard to think of any arena where this administration’s first year hasn’t been a tremendous disappointment. (Regarding the former: I didn’t mention this here earlier, but the brazen audacity of this passage from the president’s war-is-peace Nobel Prize speech made me blanch: “We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor — we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it’s easy, but when it is hard.” Uh, your Justice Department is not upholding them, remember? Is the president even aware of his own civil liberties record?)

Anyway, I keep being reminded of this line from my Obama endorsement of January 2008: “There’s a possibility — maybe even a strong possibility — that he’ll end up a Tommy Carcetti-like president: a well-meaning reformer outmatched and buffeted to and fro by the entrenched forces arrayed against him.” Well, welcome to the Carcetti presidency, y’all. The only surprise so far for many of us is in how little he’s actually even tried to enact meaningful reforms. But I guess once the president surrounded himself with the exact same GOP-lite people we’d spent months trying to defeat in the Democratic primary, the writing should have been on the wall. This will not be change we can believe in. A New Day is not dawning. And the president is not really with us — We’re going to have to do the heavy lifting for reform next year without him.

More Endorsers. | One Million Strong.

“It’s been a long, hard and difficult struggle to come to where I am now.” I’ll say…Rep. John Lewis officially switches to Obama. Also, North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan announced his backing of the Senator from Illinois today, bringing Obama’s superdelegate total to 200. (He still lags behind Sen. Clinton by 56 in the supers category, but has picked up a net total of +34 since Super Tuesday.) Finally, if you’re looking for more endorsements, there are at least 999,998 more of ’em out there: The Obama campaign reaches one million individual donors, and counting. Update: When Rep. Lewis says this was a tough decision for him, he wasn’t kidding.

The Money Pit.

The Washington Post offers some handy graphs on the comings-and-goings of Casino Jack Abramoff’s donation operation. Looks like, while the GOP has a 2-1 advantage in obtaining Abramoff and the tribes’ money, some prominent Dems — particularly Patrick Kennedy — have seen their share of the loot as well. Update: Another Dem — Byron Dorgan — returns his Abramoff-tainted money.

All about the Green.

“‘You know what bothers me?’ [Sen. Byron] Dorgan asked at the end of the hearing. ‘It’s pretty clear that this is one of the most disgusting tales of greed and avarice, and perhaps fraud and stealing. It’s unbelievable what we have uncovered here. It’s almost sickening to see what we have uncovered. And you come to our table and say, “Oh, gosh, this is just about friendships.”‘” Salon surveys the recent Senate testimony of Abramoff flunky Italia Federici, she of the quarter-million-dollar bribe. And it isn’t just the Dems disgusted by the flimsiness of her defense. “‘Since your answers are so bizarre, I won’t continue,” said McCain…’I will let others make the judgment.’“

Update: In related news, Abramoff/DeLay aide Michael Scanlon is charged with fraud. “The filing of a criminal information, rather than an indictment, often means prosecutors have reached a plea agreement with a defendant.” Does that mean Scanlon, so eager to turn on the Religious Right, will roll up on Boss DeLay? One can only hope.

Kenny’s Boy.

The GOP attempts to break PBS grow murkier, as Dems unearth a right-wing stooge secretly on CPB President’s Kenneth Tomlinson’s payroll, assigned to track “bias” on Bill Moyer’s NOW. Nebraska Senator Byron “Dorgan said that data concluded in one episode of ‘Now’ that Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, was a ‘liberal’ because he questioned the White House policy on Iraq and that a second ‘Now’ segment on financial waste at the Pentagon was ‘anti-Defense.’