Not that drink the kool-aid “Yes we can!” kind of hope, but a belief that those who asked me to work for them, asked for my money, asked me to stand outside a polling place all day in the cold February wind or stand in the hot August sun handing out walk sheets before knocking on a hundred or so doors myself, held the same fundamental beliefs I hold.

I emphatically did NOT expect to agree with everything they did or do. I’m probably the only person on earth who agrees with me all the time, and I wouldn’t wager that will always be the case. In truth, I hold a rather eclectic set of beliefs I’d not expect anyone to match entirely.

But I believe the present majority in the House of Representatives, the present majority in the Senate and the present occupant of the White House have either abandoned the principles of the Democratic Party for which I have worked (the principles, not the party), or never held them in the first place. In truth, the principles they demonstrate are just marginally better than those I despised in the first eight years of this decade.

I’ve been told to be patient; it’s only been a year, after all. But those who admonish me so, misdiagnose my disappointment.

I am not appalled not by what Congress and Barack Obama have left undone, but by what, together, they have already done.

I believe in a nation of laws. And yet faced with evidence that laws were systematically and deliberately broken, those I elected have refused to enforce those laws out of political expediency.

I believe that every person, citizen or not, has certain fundamental civil and human rights that can never be abridged in a free and humane society. But Guantanamo remains open, and some of those now housed there will never be tried and never released.

I believe that those organizations and individuals who ran our economy into a ditch and ruined the lives of millions of ordinary people who trusted them should not profit from their greed and arrogance. Yet as many as one in six Americans is now unemployed or under employed, while those who put them there receive billions in bonuses. Some of the very people who could have prevented this economic disaster now run the Treasury Department or personally advise the president.

I believe that it’s wrong for corporations to exploit the misery of those who are ill for profit and cheat them in the process. Yet before the president delivers his state of the union, we’ll have a new law that forces Americans to buy health insurance from those monopolistic corporations who exploit and cheat them now.

I believe that women should have the same right to reproductive health care as men, and that where you live should not diminish that right.  But while insurers — even those getting the federal subsidies — can cover Viagra, in many places they’ll not cover women’s reproductive services, thanks to a handful of men who belong to a right-wing religious cult that believes its members are above conventional morality and law because they’ve been chosen by God.

I believe in an open government where secrecy is extremely rare and never trumps the rights of citizens to a fair trial or redress of well-founded grievances under civil law. But my Justice Department continues to assert that “state secrets” can bar evidence from courts, even if their revelation does nothing more than embarass the government.

I believe in honest government. But my leaders continue to insist that health care reform can’t raise the deficit, that spending measures in Congress must be paid for, but commit $123 billion to fight two useless wars, without so much as a nod toward paying the bill nor a word about what that adds to the deficit. And my leaders continue to warn about the pernicious influence of corporate lobbying, while quietly pocketing their campaign contributions.

I believe that workers have the right to organize and counter the imbalance of power that otherwise allows their exploitation by corporate and Wall Street interests. I believe unions built the middle class that funds our schools, builds our roads, and nutures the innovative entrepreneurial drive that made America great. But legislation that would make it easier to organize has now been put off, probably until after the next election, where in all liklihood Democratic majorities will be smaller.

I watched (and worked to help) Howard Dean dedicate his boundless enthusiasm and considerable intelligence to rebuilding the party that rejected him in 2004. And I watched the White House publicly humiliate him while dispatching the president’s chief of staff to tell the Senate majority leader to cave to the wishes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, neither of whom has the best interests of the country or the party at heart.

I’ve watched Organizing for America drive its many dedicated and hard-working volunteers to make hundreds of phone calls, knock on doors and advocate for a health care reform effort that the White House and Democrats undermine everyday. It’s the worst kind of cynicism.

These are all things that have been done. They’re not something I can patiently wait for, nor are they likely to be reversed. And they’re not the end of the list of disappointments.

I would not be so angry and disgusted had any one or two of these things ocurred. But taken together, they signal a level of disrespect and disregard that leaves me with little hope, and a determinatino to be much more selective about where I contribute, where I work, and who I support.

I have no idea how many hours I put in during the past general election campaign here in Virginia, and don’t even ask me about 2008. Let’s just say I had to get reacquainted with family and friends afterward. In fact, for the past six or seven years, I’ve done little but work and politics.

So here I am — and what have I got?

I’ve got two U.S. Senators who supposedly are Democrats but can’t even be counted on to vote with their party on procedural issues, and instead join with Republicans to turn the Senate into a quagmire of delay, fueled by egos that know no bounds.

I’ve got a Congressman in a neighboring district — who I worked for and supported financially — only to see him vote against a spending bill that would create jobs, because he wants to reduce the deficit by an amount that’s well to the right of the decimal point. This while my brother has been trying to find work for nearly two years.

I’ve got a president who gladly hands his milk money to any bully, even when he knows the bullies will beat him up, regardless.

I’ve got candidates and committees who ask me for money and ask me to give my time to get them elected, so they can fill their “leadership” PACs with money from corporate interests and use that to build their power base, all the while ignoring me, or worse, dismissing me.

It’s well beyond frustrating.

I’m not going to quit working. The stakes are just too high. But I’m not going to keep working the way I have been. I’m done with working to elect any Democrat. It’s time to start working for and supporting better Democrats.

It’s morning on the day after a very tough election night. I’m exhausted and yet convinced that I — and all the volunteers who worked on Dem campaigns — left little or nothing on the table. Virginia Republicans have every right to crow this morning. They handed us our behinds — gift wrapped.

Kos’ analysis is spot on, but it’s only part of the story. Given a choice between Republicans and Democrats who seem to be humane versions of Republicans (and who they suspect are really true Dems just posing for votes), voters tend to choose Republicans, at least here in Virginia.

But there is more to it.

The insurance industry’s influence appears to swing about 9 votes against the public option. Whatever number of senators wind up supporting the public option, add 9 to it, and you’ll have a decent ballpark estimate for what the level of support might be if not for insurance industry contributions…

The single senator who’s position on the public option is most likely to have been changed by lobbying money is Mark Warner of Virginia, who has already raised $69,000 from insurance industry PACs in spite of having been in the Senate for less than six months. Absent industry money, the model estimates about a two-thirds likelihood that Warner would support the public option; with it, the model thinks the chances are very low. Indeed Warner has been mum on the public option to date.

Ranking next on the list is Harry Reid, who has taken some $78,800 from insurance industry PACs and who has also yet to articulate a position on the public option in spite of his status as Majority Leader. If the model is right, Reid’s noncommittal stance on the issue might be better conceived of as tacit, if somewhat soft, opposition. Following Reid is Kent Conrad of North Dakota, who has floated a compromise bill that would replace the public option with a co-op system, a version of which the Senate Finance Committee appears likely to adopt.

$69,000. In six months. No public option. No connection? Wanna bet?

I also am definitely NOT a single issue kind of Democrat. I don’t agree with Creigh Deeds on guns, but then I’ve fired one only once, when I was about eight. I’ll still campaign for Deeds, because he will be a great governor. I think thriving businesses are essential. I think their influence over the political process is so pervasive as to be pernicious.

Health Care Reform, however, is one of those issues that will help me decide which Democrats to support with my limited time and money and energy. I’m addressing this to Sen. Warner, specifically because he sent a reply to a note from my wife, saying he opposed a public option as part of the health care reform legislation in the Senate. So here’s my message:

Forget about the polls showing a vast majority of Americans want a public option in any health care reform legislation. I don’t want a Senator who abrogates his own best judgment because of a poll.

Here is the real issue: All the incentives in the current system are stacked up to guarantee that health care will get ever more expensive, more and more people will be shut out of the system, and the quality of care for most of us will get worse. The most rational way to fix that, is for there to be a competitive entry in the market that has the right incentives in place. A public insurance plan would be incentivized (I hate that word) to provide quality care, non-exclusionary coverage, and at a reasonable cost. Private insurers could (and would) compete only by changing their behavior.

That, my friends, is a market-based solution. And without it, nothing Congress passes will be reform.

First, even the most die-hard free market conservative would concede that in any market, participants respond predictably to incentives (and disincentives), and that while consumers are not perfectly rational, they’re rational enough in most instances. I suspect most would concede that a free market depends to some extent on buyers and sellers having at least some reasonable choices.

The problem with the current health care system is that:

1. The incentives are largely the opposite of what’s needed to ensure high quality affordable health care and the perverse incentives have become worse as more of the system has moved into private hands.

2. Buyers tend to be less rational about health care than other “products,” while sellers remain very rational.

3. In many senses, choice as economists use the term, doesn’t exist in the health care market.

First incentives. In an ideal world, the incentives would stack up like these examples:

1. Consumers would be rewarded for choosing the treatment options that offer the most successful outcomes at the lowest cost.

2. Insurers would be rewarded for paying legitimate claims fully and promptly.

3. Health care providers would benefit more from recommending the least expensive, effective treatment to patients and from rou