It strikes me that as hope for any real and meaningful reform of our healthcare mess has rapidly dwindled over the last month, the one thing we have stopped hearing from believers in Obama Magic is how our president is deep into some intricate three-dimensional chess game that none of us can really hope to understand, but which will have all of us erupting in spontaneous applause when he suddenly checkmates the Forces of Opposition.

If even that devout brigade no longer believes in the president’s supernatural powers and the prospect of real and meaningful healthcare reform, is there anyone left who’s able to persuade themselves that we shall overcome?

Frankly, no matter how hard I try, I’m not able to come up with any plausible scenario under which we achieve real and meaningful reform.

I’ll be delighted to be proved wrong, but at this point I’m really unable to muster up anything resembling hope.