Obama didn't assume anything. He was a senator for 12 years (federally for 4) and had plenty of experience by that point to know how partisan legislative bodies are and how members will die for their parties perceived glory. I don't believe for a second that in the aftermath of Clinton's impeachment & Gore's 500 vote loss in the state being governed by his opponents brother with tens of thousands of votes lost or miscounted that any prospective politician anywhere in the US would expect good faith from their opposition.
He was a great orator and liked using that come together message as an attempted bait to push popular support in his favor, though. It was also a great excuse for pushing an extremely conservative healthcare bill through congress as if it were some major achievement for his more progressive supporters.
You mean Joe Lieberman, who was Al Gore's choice for Vice President when he won the Democratic nomination for president in 2000, and went on to endorse Republican John McCain for president only 8 years later?
The facts are that Democratic Senator Max Baucus, Chairmen of the Senate Finance Committee and Obama's pointman in the Senate who was responsible for writing the language of Obamacare (Romneycare) invited a cabal of insurance industry lobbyists into the negotiating room to write the bill and specifically excluded all single-payer advocates from the negotiating table. Its pure revisionist history to suggest that Obama and his minions did everything they could to push a public option (let alone single-payer or even a Medicare-for-all type provision). The facts are that Obama and the Democratic leadership caucus were determined to pass a bill that enshrined the predominance of the for-profit, employer-based health insurance industry. Obamacare (Romneycare) was designed from the beginning as an effort to preclude real, substantive change and improvements to our healthcare system by implementing some very minor improvements (such as the pre-existing conditions clause) and some cosmetic changes. This was abundantly clear to everyone who was paying close attention at the time and not getting their information from corporate news outlets.
He was a great orator and liked using that come together message as an attempted bait to push popular support in his favor, though. It was also a great excuse for pushing an extremely conservative healthcare bill through congress as if it were some major achievement for his more progressive supporters.