I wish I could find the tweet to credit the guy, but someone once said something to the effect of, :"The number of Democrats needed to do anything is N+1, where N is number number of Democrats currently in office." 50 votes in the Senate? Well, nothing can get done because of Joe Manchin. Need one more. 60 votes on the senate? Well, that's barely a super-majority, need one more. Oh, Ted Kennedy died! Need one more so we can have a super-majority again! Could the Democrats eliminate the filibuster? Don't think about it! Elect one more Democrat.
You can call me ignorant all you want (I'm not by the way, I lived in MA at the time, I remember Scott Browns election better than you), but at the end of the day, these are just more excuses. Two houses, a President with a strong mandate, and a year of filibuster proof majority, and they couldn't pass their own agenda. Either it wasn't important to them or the party isn't fit to govern.