Like the Mississippi, the Affordable Care Act just keeps rolling along. And as it does, the problems continue to pile up, one on top of the other.

The most recent one, of course, is the disastrous rollout of the ObamaCare exchanges. It’s not simply that it’s failed; it’s that the failure has been so complete, so total, and it has occurred despite the Obama administration having had so much time to prepare for this moment.

It isn’t helpful to the president, of course, that even the elite media is covering the story with some candor, skeptically rather than worshipfully. Take CBS News. Reporter Jan Crawford’s report is worth watching. It does a nice job showing why the rollout has been “nothing short of disastrous.”

This report comes after Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart asked some fairly pointed questions of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the “level of incompetence that’s larger than what it should be.” When a liberal Democratic president begins to lose CBS News and Jon Stewart, you know things aren’t going well.

But the loss in confidence is understandable. After all, the president’s health-care plan has amassed a remarkably dismal record, from the ineptness of the rollout of the exchanges and data systems that are not secure and leave citizens vulnerable to fraud and identity theft to higher premiums, exploding costs, people being forced to leave their preferred coverage, a plan whose “universal coverage” leaves more than 30 million people uninsured, postponing the employer mandate and more. No wonder the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, earlier this year stated that the implementation of the bill was shaping up to be a “huge train wreck.” It appears Senator Baucus was understating things a bit.

Here’s what’s important to realize. We can now judge the president’s promises against his results, what he said he would do versus what he has actually done. The president is being assessed not by his rhetoric but by his performance. And his performance is, in almost every respect, simply dreadful. He combines two problematic qualities: dogmatism and ineptitude.

As for the Affordable Care Act: It is, in conception and execution, emblematic of modern liberalism. This is what progressives wanted. It was what they fought for. And now they own it. It’s beginning to dawn on a few of them that it may well haunt them for years to come.