Lost in all the hoopla is the sobering fact that if about 300 voters in Minn didn't vote for Al Franken, the whole country doesn't get health care reform.

"When it comes to health care reform, one might be tempted to think "the system," in the broadest possible sense, "worked.""

No, I don't find my self tempted to thin that AT ALL.

More interesting to me personally was this remark of Schmitt's:

"A fierce, aggressive liberalism, the counterpart to the high point of conservative exercise of institutional power in the middle of this decade, was not going to succeed. Recall, that such an approach ultimately failed conservatism."

Implicit in this is the claim that: Being largely correct (the key difference between left and right) is not importantly relevant to the success of an ideology.

I don't necessarily disagree that this is in *fact* the case. But I don't think that the truth of that implicit claim should just be noted, and then forgotten.

Until truth is considered the - or at least *a* - major determining factor in the successful passing of policy proposals, there will be no hope for anything better than a muddled slightly-left-of-center centrism.

Getting the truth into the spotlight is necessary at ALL levels, and it is currently missing at ALL levels - from the American public on up to the Senate.

Forgive me if I'm embittered by the GOP tactics in this debate, but I am. Given the improbability of your a) and b), I feel like I might as well hope a sudden surge in the unicorn population will fix our health care problems, and pots of leprechaun gold will allow us to pay off the national debt.

I'm really glad the Senate actually passed something, but it doesn't keep me from feeling we are doomed.

It is amazing HCR wasn't worse than it was, considering the need for 60 votes. The most contentious bills were nail-biters with 51.

I can't believe we've gotten this far.

The filibuster has certainly outlived its usefulness - you shouldn't need 60 for anything but constitutional amendments.

Eliminating the filibuster will aide in the emergence of a sane wing of the Republican party. Right now there's a big incentive to try to block everything because there is a good chance it will work. Take away the filibuster and that won't work anymore and Republicans will have to find some other way to get attention.

But wait, it would have all been so much easier if Obama had just *tried* harder, right? There are no structural problems that he can't overcome with his personality! It's a fact!

Wasn't this the point of having the VP be the tiebreaking vote in the Senate? That there would be close votes but that ultimately a simple majority should be the determinant?

The 60 vote requirement is unamerican and counter to the framer's intnent in the extreme.

It's worth (re)reading this piece by Taibbi from 2006, The Worst Congress Ever where he calls out the heavy handed methods used by the Republicans in the 109th Congress. The wingers have a long history of ratfucking but I think that the curtain was really pulled back and the gloves came off (sorry for the metaphor mixing) with the advent of the '94 Republican takeover of Congress and the "Contract On America." And now they piss and moan about being treated unfairly!

Remember Newt's Language: A Key Mechanism of Control? It's there that he codified the overt nastiness that we've seen since.

What is really frustrating is the "there's something wrong with both parties" meme. At the risk of sounding like a seven year old, it is the Republicans that started this and I don't see an end to it until the current bunch of Republican neanderthals leave the Congress, however that happens. It's also possible that, because of the sorry state of the SCLM that gives undue deference to these creeps, along with many other problems (eg campaign finance) they'll be able to carry on as long as there's a creep constituency.

Obama won the presidency by (subtly)changing the terms of political debate. The passage of the health care bill does the same. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are making reforms needed to ensure that the U.S. is a successful society in the 21st century. Both the Republicans and the so-called progressives are antiques. Neither asks, nor answers, the question: What must the U.S. do to be a successful 21st century society?

This is the problem in CA. A minority of one third can block anything useful regarding the budget.

Democrats need to stop living in fear of becoming a minority again and take the initiative. If they do, their return to minority status could take quite a while to transpire.

It's time to seize the day.

Wait a second. Let's envision a future where the current strain of Republicists (sic) garner 57 members of the Senate.

Would we want a filibuster?

"At the risk of taking an overly-simplistic approach to a multi-faceted problem, I continue to think the solution lies in a) the eventual emergence of a sane wing of the Republican Party; and b) the return of majority rule to the Senate. The ability to actually solve problems and address crises in an efficient, coherent fashion would be aided immensely by these two highly improbable developments."

Actually, all it takes is b. In a very real sense, the problem really lies with the spinelessness of Senate Democrats -- and the Administration. The requirement of 60 votes for cloture to break a parliamentary maneuver known as a filibuster is a Senate Rule (#22)that can be overturned by any one of several other parliamentary maneuvers requiring a majority vote, thereby allowing the majority to pass whatever. One such maneuver has been called the nuclear option.

Google it-- its not wishful thinking requiring permission by the Supremes or some such outside authority. In fact, the Supremes many decades ago ruled that Senate rules can be overturned by majority votes.

You think the Republicans would not have used the nuclear option in 2005 if what they wanted wasn't handed to them by a "Gang of 14?? [ They wanted a set of right-wing judges approved for Federal bench positions -- and they got most of what they wanted by threatening the nuclear option.] You think they wouldn't use it again to pass whatever once they again become a majority? Get Real.

If 50 Democratic Senators and the current VP don't have the spine/ cajones to do so, then in all likelihood forget fairy tales with happy endings for this Senate and Chief Executive -- and Democratic control of US Government. If there are not 50 votes to end a filibuster, bills or amendments in 2010 to really improve health care reform, climate change, whatever, are essentially exercises in "pass inadequate bills and pronounce those bills as ground-breaking". And hope the American voters don’t notice. Voters on average may be generally uninformed, but their not THAT dumb.

In health care and other issues, Obama and Senate Democrats constantly reinforce a meme that Democrats are easily rolled by those making intransigent demands. This reinforces a long-standing meme that they are wimps, wusses, chumps-- pick your term. McCain, Coker, deMint and most Republicans may be batshit bonkers pushing insane ideologically-based solutions, but they appear willing to take a lot of flack to push their agenda. Voters consistently reject candidates they view as weak wimps, no matter what their ideology or personal heroism (Google McGovern, Carter, Kerry, Dukakis, etc).