My Take on the Vote and Where We Are Now in a Nutshell

For what it's worth, I'm pleased the bill passed the House, and I don't think it was really as close there as it seemed (I think Kucinich, for example, was in Pelosi's pocket along with a handful of other eventual "no"'s, allowed to make symbolic protests against a very imperfect bill, while available as "yes"'s for passage should somebody try mischief or betrayal to scuttle passage). This means, among other things, that I do think progressives do have a bit more wiggle room to maneuver in Committee than it may look like we do in the aftermath of Senate passage. I do expect Senate passage to be ugly, maybe even ugly enough to require a fallback to Snowe's trigger when all is said and done -- here's hoping I'm wrong -- which would then play out, I suspect, as an even more weakened public option than the one in the House version in committee, but provide plenty that would still pay immediate dividends in quality of life -- and electoral math by the mid-terms -- and give the left a real foot in the door to get somewhere substantially better over the next twelve years.

That's my sense of it in a nutshell, as a complete armchair outsider to these things, mind you: Last night's accomplishment was real -- just as a failure would have been really catastrophic. Things get dense and fraught in the Senate now (Reid is better than the worst that gets said of him, but he really is generally ineffectual and unequal to the demands of the historical moment in which he finds himself). Rabbits get pulled from hats and arms twisted for real in rooms without daylight in Committee. And then we end up with something not only better than nothing but something worth something, even if heartbreakingly less than what is needed or wanted.

Then we move on to the next thing.