Slate magazine yesterday posted their own version of the list of problems that will handicap Democrats in today’s elections, among the top:

Max Baucus. Health care might not have happened without Sen. Max Baucus of Montana. Then again, it might have happened a lot faster. Over the course of four months in 2009, Baucus made one compromise after another—scrapping the public option, killing the employer mandate—in order to attract Republican votes that never materialized. That gave Republicans time to demagogue the bill and ate up valuable time on the congressional calendar—time that could have been used to pass legislation like immigration reform or an energy bill (which, of course, would probably have hurt Democrats, too).

It is no secret that the phenomena is having an effect in Montana too.  Montana Republicans’ number one attack on local Dems is to compare them to Democrats in Washington.  Obama and the Washington Dems have offered very little in the way of persuasive rhetoric in defense of the big ticket items like health-care, stimulus and bailout, as I’ve already written about here.