Sorry about the random order of the updates...
Here's what worries me... the notion that this is the best deal, politically, that insert name here could have gotten on this.
Let's say President Obama. We need to know if this is the best we can expect of him. Is this the extent of his negotiation abilities? Because I don't believe he used anything close to all the avenues available to 'The President' on this deal. But is this the best a President Obama can do?
If so, is he able and willing to do better? Does he think he actions were sufficient? Or by accepting this bill are we conveying the message to Obama and the Republicans that this is the full extent of what we can expect from the White House in all future negotiations? Because it might take the Left withholding future support on some of Obama's policies to get him to go back to the drawing table and get something better. And if he won't or can't, then we need to take the negotiations out of his hands. Because we tried the whole no pressure on the President by Congressional Dems and no pressure on Congressional Dems by the base thing and that didn't work out too well. [Update #3: I meant to mention the whole replacing the carrot with the stick metaphor here...]
[Update #1: neither did asking Pelosi to resign for the failures of Reid after the midterms -- why does he still have a job? But that's another diary. Several diaries, in fact.]
I am genuinely proud though that it only took two years for Dems to revolt, compared to the six years it took the right to turn on Bush. It's one of our strengths, or one of the right's weaknesses if you prefer. But I think we're finally starting to see that change we can believe in. And it turns out we are the ones we were waiting for after all. Who knew?
Update #2: Am I alone in wanting to grab the President and say "you tried it your way the first two years... how'd that turn out? Won't you at least consider trying it our way? What is this absolute refusal to even consider the possibility that we might be right? We only got you elected and were your entire political arm til you dropped us like a hot potato"?