It's to the shame of the Democratic Party that humorist Will Rogers' famous political line remains salient: "I am not a member of any organized party--I am a Democrat."

Democrats are mired in division over the issue of the day. They disagree on how to pay for health care reform, whether companies should be compelled to pay for employee's insurance, and the proposed government insurance option.

And there is no end to the internecine battles in sight. President Obama faces a huge decision on Afghanistan. All in or begin the road out, his top generals apparently advise. But Democrats are already splitting over the war, and comparisons to Vietnam are common. This president's choice, as of now, is eerily similar to Lyndon Johnson's: double down or leave the table?

In the end, it's not going to get easier for Obama and his party. And if it is already this hard, then difficult choices must be made. And made fast. Too much else awaits country.

Health care has swallowed up the president's domestic agenda for at least three months. It has sapped the strength of his bully pulpit.

Health care reform is not the sole explanation for the president's slide in the polls, but it's the primary reason for that slide. The Pew Research Center's weekly News Interest Index survey consistently registered health care and the economy as the dominant issues of the summer. The economic news improved, however, while the health care debate became increasingly acrimonious and divisive. And it's over the summer that Obama's approval rating crawled from the low 60s to the low 50s, where it now rests.

The end is also not in sight. The final health care bill appears weeks, perhaps months, off. This is because, in part, Democrats are fighting the biggest and hardest fights, rather than the battles they can clearly win. And covering a good portion of the noninsured, securing those with pre-existing conditions, are not small things.

The issue is more significant than a party's future. It regards whether Democrats can prove competent enough to enact the future they campaigned on. It's the recognition, to quote Voltaire, that "the perfect is the enemy of the good." All Democrats believe some reform will do some good. But many liberals remain bent on perfection at the potential expense of what they view as the greater good.

This week Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and John Rockefeller will likely continue to push for a government plan in the Senate Finance Committee, despite the near impossibility of a public option passing out of the committee. Meanwhile, last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi upped her campaign for a public option.

Democrats must reconcile themselves to the limits of their mandate. In broad terms, Pew and ABC News/Washington Post polling in mid-September showed Americans still split over the health care proposals in Congress. And on big social reform, definitive mandates have often preceded law.

In late 1964, according to Gallup, 57 percent of Americans approved of "a compulsory medical insurance program covering hospital and nursing home care for the elderly" that was "financed out of increased social security taxes." Polling during the Kennedy administration showed two-thirds of Americans behind "having the Social Security tax increased" to "pay for old age medical insurance."

In other words, Americans were willing to bear the cost for Medicare. They are not as willing to accept the bill of reform today. One recent poll by Gallup/USA Today found that seven in 10 Americans would oppose the government offering health insurance coverage to all Americans if it resulted in "higher taxes on the middle class."

On the other side, Republicans have circled the wagons. Democratic finance committee chairman, Max Baucus, pleased few Democrats by offering a compromise measure that excluded the employer mandate and the public option. Yet no Republicans came to his side. As GOP Senator John Ensign explained, after expressing his ongoing opposition, "we have fundamental differences in philosophy." Baucus stood alone.

In the Post's Dana Milbank words, "Baucus is suffering the consequences of being one of the last serious men in town." But the Democrats' social agenda suffers most.

Both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter enjoyed Democratic-controlled Congresses initially and still failed to win their early domestic agenda. They proved unable to pull their party together on core principles. Old jokes about Democratic disunity began to feel like axioms.

In August 1980, when Democrats had 59 Senators and a stronger majority in the House, the party divided over the nomination battle between Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy. The division was infamously deeper at the convention of 1968, when students and police clashed in Grant Park.

It was symbolic that Obama gave his election night acceptance speech last November in Grant Park. Democrats had come full circle. Even veteran liberals, jaded through the decades, found their optimism again. Obama was to remake their Great Society. Now Democratic fissures seem again more prominent than unity. And little has yet been remade.