Also...

As a good companion piece to Rep. Weiner's comments, Paul Krugman notes Beltway Myth becoming reimagined fact in real time, in response to Dana Milbank's terrible piece in which he claimed that "a protracted debate on the public option" delayed the passage of the insurance industry giveaway healthcare legislation. Observes Krug:

Um, that's not what happened — and I followed the health care process closely. The debate over the public option wasn't what slowed the legislation. What did it was the many months Obama waited while Max Baucus tried to get bipartisan support, only to see the Republicans keep moving the goalposts; only when the White House finally concluded that Republican "moderates" weren't negotiating in good faith did the thing finally get moving.

So look at how the Village constructs its mythology. The real story, of pretend moderates stalling action by pretending to be persuadable, has been rewritten as a story of how those DF hippies got in the way, until the centrists saved the day.

The worst of it is that I suspect Obama's memory has gone down the same hole.

Yes, well, it's certainly easier to be indignant at your ungrateful base if you imagine you tried valiantly to get them everything they wanted and failed, rather than treating the primary goal as your first bargaining chip.