Are we at a turning point in the Obama presidency? It took far too long, but the president has belatedly grasped that when the other party is out to destroy you, the search for common ground is a fool's errand.

You couldn't blame Paul Volcker for feeling ill-used. He was one of the first of the financial Brahmins to endorse Barack Obama, back when Hillary Clinton was a sure thing for the nomination. Volcker was an earlier adviser to Obama than Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Bob Rubin, or the rest of the Wall Street gang. Then, after Obama became the Democratic nominee, Volcker was trotted out as a senior advisor and his prestigious name was dropped for a top administration post.

There is no single formula. The Canadians do it with a single payer system for the insurance part, but physicians are private. The Brits have an integrated National Health Service. The Germans achieve near-universal coverage through a system of nonprofit health insurance plans.

March 2010 will either be remembered as the month when the scales fell from Barack Obama's eyes and he realized that the bipartisan fantasy, given the current Republican Party, is a fool's errand. Or it will go down in history as the moment when Obama had a chance to change course and emerge as a leader — and flinched. Which will it be?

If Democrats can start sounding like Democrats again, they'll have a better shot at holding onto their majority in Congress next November. And if they do keep their majority, they should do two things to turn themselves into a legislative party that can actually do the people's business.

So what will it be, Mr. Punch-it-through, or Mr. Bipartisan? Obama seems to be determined to give bipartisanship one more shot, hoping that his reasonableness will trump Republican obstruction.

Looked at together, President Obama's State of the Union Address last Wednesday and his appearance before the House Republican Caucus retreat in Baltimore on Friday offered a fascinating window on how Obama and his advisers believe an embattled president should lead in the face of wall-to-wall obstruction. Though the stance is high-minded and the words eloquent and heartfelt, the exercise fails as politics.

As so many of us writing for Huffington Post have been arguing for the past year, if President Obama did not cease behaving as the ally of Wall Street, the right wing would emerge as populist champion of the forgotten American. The election results in Massachusetts have now provided the exclamation point.

How could the health care issue have turned from a reform that was going to make Barack Obama ten feet tall into a poison pill for Democratic senators? Whether or not Martha Coakley squeaks through in Massachusetts on Tuesday, the health bill has already done incalculable political damage and will likely do more.

Much of the mainstream press has played the rising opposition to Senate confirmation of Ben Bernanke as a case of misplaced populist rage. The fact that the opposition within the Senate began with that chamber's left (Bernie Sanders) and right (Jim Bunning) seems to confirm the premise that it's only the fringe that opposes his [...]