But I also think the lines being sold by Dionne and Yglesias are disingenuous. Dionne writes of "[a] single election, a lone health care reform bill (even a big one), this civil rights bill, that labor law reform: all are steps down a road. They are not a destination." What's different from the others here? The conclusion that the "health care reform bill" is in fact a meaningful "step down a road." It is my view that it is a little bit better that the health bill will pass than if it does not pass. But that's it. It is a crappy bill, considering what it could have been. People like Dionne and Yglesias are invested in believing the health bill is more than it is. It strikes me as a pretty small step, with a lot of sideways to it.

Dionne wrote:

But as King knew, demanding that the check be honored is only a first step. And democratic politics is an ongoing commitment. A single election campaign, however exhilarating, is just the beginning of engagement. Moreover, embedded critics—their ranks include, but are not limited to, academics and intellectuals—have a necessarily ambiguous relationship to power.

Here, the differences between Lincoln, the politician, and King, the prophetic activist and critic, are clear. The politician focuses on the work that can get done and is called upon to have a realist’s sense of the limits of the possible. The critic is dogged in pointing to the work that remains unfinished, the reforms that are not adequate, the crooked places that have not yet been made smooth. “No, no,” King declared, “we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’” That is, to say the least, a standard that politicians cannot live by. But it is the standard to which they must be called.

[. . .] [S]ome critics will hold out and say they are not satisfied. They will call power to account even when those in power have some sympathy for their goals. They will lay out the requirements for a future better than the present even during times of progress—perhaps especially during times of progress. [. . .] What is not an option in democratic politics is self-marginalization. Gestures are not enough. Flag burning does not cleanse a nation. The English department is not the White House. “Politics,” Weber wrote, “is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective.” This, at least, is something that most progressive intellectuals learned in the years between 2001 and 2009.

What also should not be an option is mindless cheerleading for poor political and policy performances. And that is what Democrats delivered on the health bill. E.J. Dionne is incapable of providing that critique. He is too much of The Village. The criticisms of the health bill and the Democrats' work, both political and policy-wise, goes beyond the aspirational. It is a pragmatic critique. The President, his Chief of Staff, the Senate leadership and indeed, Village Democrats, did a very poor job on the health bill.

They did not do "what was possible." they never even challenged the possible. Hell, the did what was politically harmful and piss poor on policy. This critique is not a starry eyed idealist one. It is a pragmatic one, using the measure of history to judge the political actors of the present. Today's Democratic politicians came up short. History will judge them harshly. As it will the Village chroniclers.

Speaking for me only