Mr. President,

I was happy to work my gnarled fingers to the bone for you last year: blogging, making calls and canvassing. I had to sacrifice much because I'm disabled and typing is hard for me. Everything is hard. But it was harder still to ignore the possibilities that you opened up for this country when you used the word "Hope" and said it was an audacious thing.

I believed you would fight for us and the things you spoke of. But the only audacity I see in you now is the audacity to make concessions on health care reform and then tell us it's all rainbows and unicorns.

In one debate after another with Hillary Clinton (27 of them, I think), you laid out the structure and function of what is now called the strong Public Option. For many of us who worked our hearts out for you, the Public Option is the core of health care reform. It was supposed to get the blood-sucking insurance companies off our backs; allow us to escape the private market for cheaper, nobler care; and put downward pressure on the obscene, skyrocketing cost of premiums.

You're supposed to be the Commander in Chief, but on domestic issues you've acted more like a Weasel First Class, sir. The Public Option is more than a "sliver" of health care reform, as you described it in Montana. It's the heart and soul of fixing a system that never cared for the millions of uninsured. It's part and parcel of forcing the insurance industry to curb its greed and finally treat people as the precious, rare creatures we are -- a species uniquely fabled, each of us, to possess a soul.

Mr. President, co-ops are not what you promised us. You did promise us. But you never, ever used the word "co-op" in reference to health care until this spring.

You're caving to all that is wrong with our politics and our health care system, President Obama.

Reverse your course now or the Coalition of the Hopeful you built will be forever lost to you. We did not drink the Kool-Aid. We have not been blind. We just believed in the evidence of things not seen. But what we see now is hurtful and not enough to secure any further loyalty or inspire any devotion of our time. We will not work for causes you will abandon when the going gets tough.

We did not drink the Kool-Aid. We expected you to lead. Has it all been an audacious lie?

Mr. President? Are you there?