Fail. Lose. Fail.

President Obama and the Democratic leadership still don't get it. They've finally decided to cut away from the joke of getting Republican support for the Health Care Reform bill, perhaps even using reconciliation to fix some unpalatable aspects of the Senate version. Their ballsiness and bravado is at least eight months late.

It may well be that political scientists will someday study Mr. Obama's approach to getting this legislation passed and determine it to be one of the worst political endeavors ever undertaken by the Democrats. They've thoroughly hosed this one up.

This mishmash of protectionism and social safety-net finds little support among the American people. The Republicans have successfully demonized it, and their disciplined slow-walk has resulted in a public perception of the Democrats as being, yet again, impotent, inept and utterly tone-deaf to the will of the public.

The Right hates the cost and the expansion of government, the Left sees it as yet another blatant bow to corporatism as evidenced by the deals with Big Pharma and the absence of the public option.

When this is all analyzed at some future date, it will be the failure to enact a true public option that will insure that this bill is a political loser. Poll after poll showed, across the board, Americans were willing to embrace a bill that contained a true public option: an option that allowed you, if you were dissatisfied with your insurance company, to buy into something like Medicare. Is there anyone who doesn't think such an option wouldn't work as a significant check against the excesses of the insurance cartel? This bill gives us mandates, and no such choice. I don't know what members of Congress think, but I believe that equals a whole lot of throw the bums out, and the Republican bums aren't voting for this.

Washington as a whole is an expert in misreading the tea leaves of national sentiment. They've done it yet again, and may have insured the Obama presidency will be a failure. How does that happen with large Congressional majorities and the smartest guys in years, being in power? The future may have to answer that one, too.