We finally got health care passed and it didn't cost the President one of his, well, you know what I mean. Now comes the easy part, what the White House should have been doing the entire year, which is selling the strong points of his health care bill and get the ridiculously obstructionist GOP off his, well you know what.

Just getting to the point where a vote could be held, and there was really no doubt once the abortion piece was solved, was nothing short of brilliant. Makes one wonder, if this occurred in roughly a month, how come it took over a year and a half to get a vote in the first place? Part of the answer lies, of course in the strategy of 'NO' adopted by the Republicans, but if you delve deeper, the delay and indeed its neverending status of being 'imperiled' can be traced to one individual, and that is the President.

That's not to say that the President placed the process or the real teeth of the bill at peril, because that doesn't quite capture what happened over the last year. The president's considerable intellect was as much to blame in this as any political blunder carried out by Emanuel or anybody else in the White House. That intellect thought he could outslick a few Republicans into supportiung his plan, thus creating the veneer of bipartisanship. But when they kept coming back with NO, for no real reason except "cost!", the monkey was out of the cage. No longer could the White House afford to finesse the legislative process with its lofty language and side deals with the industry, because that wasn't working. The White House had to return to its roots, in the rough and tumble style of Chicago politics, just to get a friggin' vote on this here thing. This also meant remembering that Dems had the biggest majority of his presidency, and that now was as good a time as any to get something passed.

"Hey Mike, anybody got an Old Style back dere before we figger out how we get this thing done?"

Right after the debacle that made Scott Brown the first Republican Senator elected from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in over 40 years, a number of factors came together that made it now or never for the president's signature domestic policy initiative to pass or fail. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the president began discussing what exactly it was that her membership needed to pass something, and how could she get to 216 when they 'figgered dat out'. Next, the President's idea to hold a summit discussion amongst the entire Congressional leadership, both Democratic and Republican, put the GOP on blast to the American people that they really didn't have an alternative, and were opposing the bills strictly for political gain. Finally, poll numbers and news of Anthem Health Care in California raising its' clients' premiums a whopping 39% in the first part of the year made a lot of the stars align on this. Both the president and the speaker felt like the momentum was coming to their side of the table. http://http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/health/policy/21reconstruc...

The president got more juice when he received a letter from a woman in Ohio who said that her insurance was dropping her upon learning of her diagnosis of leukemia, on top of the cancer she had already beat. Talk about a perfect storm. So when in the last 2 weeks, the president and the Speaker began discussing a vote with a clear set of goals and how to get there, you best believe Republicans lost their minds and began pulling out all the stops, including bussing Tea Baggers to the Capitol to spit at and call black Congressmen the n-word among other choice epithets, but I digress. Bottom line, the GOP got out-politicked by people they bet wouldn't get down like that.

So here we are, and the historic moment has come and gone. Now what? If the Democrats don't get out front immediately about the immediate benefits, the GOP Senators will try to kill what happened last night, and they can, reconciliation "changes" or not. And it would also serve the president to keep it gangsta now and then to let the Republicans know why he was elected, and why they will go down to defeat once again.

"Hey Bare, a little less Harverd, and more SouthSide next time, huh. You almost gave me a friggin' heart attaick over here, fer crissakes." You get the picture.