Who will take the plunge, going to the left of the White House, outfoxing Hillary Clinton and grabbing the base by the lapels? Maybe Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Howard Dean? Perhaps a clever former senator like Russ Feingold (Wis.). Or maybe House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.). It is remarkable, really, that the left is so passive, so cowed by the White House still that no one sees the opportunity to extricate himself or herself from the Obamacare mess. Defending Obama and his health-care plan is a loser.

The message practically writes itself: I was one of those who wanted the public option because I knew exactly where this half-fish, half-fowl health-care creature would lead. If Medicare is good enough for the old, why not for the young?! That Joe Lieberman and the inept White House (need I say more) got us into this mess. The problem isn’t that the implementation is messed up; it is that the entire project was doomed to fail. That’s why I opposed it then and why we need to get rid of it now. We’ve got to stop defending Obama and start defending the American people.