Is the country better off than it was a year ago? Hell yes,” writes the New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch, apropos of the one-year anniversary on Wednesday of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, and the nominal end of the Bush II era. Now, there exists a body of evidence—an expanded War on Terror, a resurgent Republican party, a stalled healthcare reform bill, a Guantanamo Bay that’s still open for business—that suggests that the correct answer to that question might have been: Are you fucking kidding me? And but nevertheless, Mr. Gourevitch argues that Mr. Obama, in his first year in office, among other things, “handled the economy deftly to prevent total collapse and spur a promising initial recovery (working with the big banks when necessary, and against them when that is wise).”

Mr. Obama may yet work “against” the banks—indeed, earlier today, he made some rather belated noise about doing so. We’ll believe it when we see it. But the fact remains that so far the “promising initial recovery” Mr. Gourevitch speaks of has been a phenomenon exclusive to Wall Street. That explains why Goldman Sachs reported a record profit for 2009 today, even as the latest statistics from the Department of Labor, also released today, show unemployment still steadily rising.

It also explains why a poll shows that among those in Massachusetts who voted in 2008 for Mr. Obama and then also, this past Tuesday, for Republican Scott Brown—a demographic whose very existence is noteworthy—”three out of five voted for [Mr.] Brown because they had wanted a public option” in the healthcare reform bill, and the Democrats, who control both houses of Congress, haven’t delivered what they promised. Furthermore, that same poll shows that among those in Massachusetts who voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, but who stayed home on Tuesday, a full 80 percent want a healthcare reform bill that includes a public option.

Democrats can make all the excuses they want. (”Sometimes excuses actually excuse,” Mr. Gourevitch’s New Yorker colleague, Hendrik Hertzberg, actually wrote). They can blame the messes they inherited from the previous administration; they can blame the lousy campaign Martha Coakley ran against Mr. Brown (and there’s no doubt it was lousy); they can even blame the many ignorant, nonsensical Massholes who pulled the lever for Mr. Brown, even though dude openly admits he’s eager to get to Washington so he can lend a hand killing healthcare reform. But if Mr. Brown’s victory on Tuesday proved anything, it’s that the voters themselves know who and what are really to blame for the shape Democrats are in.