Democrats

Losing the 60th seat in the Senate might actually end up being the best thing that could have happened to get good healthcare reform done.

They're finally talking about reconciliation:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have begun considering a list of changes to the Senate bill [...] The changes could be included in separate legislation that, if passed, would pave the way for House approval of the Senate bill — a move that would preserve President Barack Obama's vision of a sweeping health reform plan.

With reconciliation, Democrats will have a 9 seat margin of error, rather than the 0 seat margin supermajority strategy. Now that each individual Senator in the Democratic caucus can no longer make demands by threatening to defect, we can finally get a good bill passed.

The Shrill One: "the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional."

Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week. Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward.

It was, however, a close-run thing. And the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional.

Democratic party leadership (with the brief exception of Howard Dean's DNC) has been really really stupid for decades. But lately, they've gone all out stupid.

They have enough votes in the Senate to pass what they got passed in the House. More than enough actually. Somewhere around 54-56.

They can use reconciliation to keep the Republicans and Lieberman from being able to prevent a vote.

Public option. Medicare buy-in. No pre-existing conditions. Regulation for insurance companies. All of that crap, they could pass it. Public option, etc are very popular with the voters. So is making healthcare coverage universal. You know, the kind of policy that voters like and vote for.

But they won't do that. They say that would make the Republicans mad and block everything in the Senate. Well the GOP might get pissy, but they're already blocking everything they can and have been ever since they lost their majority in 2006.

Polls show that Democrats won't show up to vote in 2010 without good healthcare reform - but turnout would be good if good stuff gets passed.

The Democratic Party has been trying to get universal health coverage for decades. It is their biggest issue.

So. WHY!? Do they want smaller majorities? Republican majorities? Do they all want to lose their jobs? Are they all hypocrites? Insane? Suicidal? What the hell is going on?

Unbelievable.

Obama has chosen to release the OLC torture memos, one of which is already available. He also promises no prosecutions for CIA officials.