Why? Why won't the Democrats do the populist thing?

I'm really not getting this: it would seem to me that the best way to insure a new era of Democratic domination would be to:

1. Enact real, actual health care reform, along European lines. This will be popular, and would show the Republicans to be fear-mongering assholes;

2. Some combination of banking reform (revive Glass-Steagal, say) and way high taxes on banking industry bonuses to impose consequences on the banking industry for being reckless and for nearly destroying our economy

3. Populist tax increases on the wealthy and near-wealthy;

4. The EFCA, to give workers more of a chance to bargain for a larger piece of the economic pie.

This would seem to be obvious to me; the fact that nothing the administration is doing even faintly echoes any of this does not fill me with optimism about our chances in 2010 and 2012.

Howard Dean quoted Truman back in the '04 campaign: "If you run a fake Republican against a real Republican, the real Republican will win every time." The Obama administration does not seem to get that this is an absolutely essential insight.