I appreciate your position with respect President Obama--I supported the candidate and probably will vote for him again (though grudgingly), if only because of the lunacy the Repugs represent. But nothing about the actual health care bill was even liberal--let alone revolutionary--or promised to be. The only universal coverage option that made any economic sense (even from an efficiency standpoint), the weak "public option," Obama took off the table from the beginning. I defended the proposal to my relatives and friends in terms of what it prevents--coverage recision, coverage denial for pre-existing conditions--and, in theory, what it's supposed to do for costs. I still think we are marginally better with than without it, but it was the most conservative plan you could get and still address adverse selection issues. So, no surprise that it got so little defense from the left. (I understand that the existence of this left is a vexed topic in these parts.)
This will be an ongoing problem for him. The left has nowhere else to go, but Obama has stopped even making noises in that direction. And the noises he has made in the recent past were hollow. For example, I liked the speech in which he declared how unfair it was to give tax breaks to billionaires while the middle class suffers and that he wouldn't renew the tax cuts again. It was a rousing speech, but it came right after he had extended the Bush tax cuts for two years, but unemployment benefits for one year.
Christian