Reply #47: As it should be his slogan...

[Drunken Irishman]

And why many progressives like Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders and a great deal of others supported it in the end (even, gasp, Kucinich!)

You ask what happened to the days of LBJ? Johnson's medicare was, believe it or not, a compromise. It wasn't true universal reform, was it?

Civil Rights? Also a compromise. Talk to a great deal of blacks in that era and you'll hear a tale about how civil rights only inched us in the right direction. It was also only passed because most Republicans supported it. Had it not been for Republicans, it would've failed because Democrats, specifically Southern Democrats, opposed civil rights legislation.

Imagine that. Republicans being the key to passing such a monumental legislation.

That wasn't the case this time around. No, instead of fighting just Republicans, Obama had to fight Democrats.

Had LBJ faced a united Republican front in either his medicare or civil rights fight, neither even come close to passing.

Even then, what we got had to be added to later.