I don't see why you think this is a semantic requirement of HTTP. Perhaps there's some confusion over what HTTP semantics are. Let me refer you to http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-2.... It doesn't discuss exposing all HTTP traffic to network intermediaries. Perhaps you're thinking of the HTTP messaging layer http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-2.... Also, I think your statement about allowing an in-path intermediary to act as a CDN is weird, since a CDN is defined as "a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet. The goal of a CDN is to serve content to end-users with high availability and high performance." [1].

It's true, HTTPS is full of tradeoffs. You've identified some of them.

What do you see in HTTP/2 that "codifies this workaround"? That wasn't immediately obvious to me. Recall that HTTP/2 is basically just multiplexing with prioritized streams. There's no requirement on TLS in the spec, although all current browser deployments (of SPDY) require TLS.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network