Something goes wrong again ... and again and again

With the federal budget rollout, a jobs bill and action on financial regulation on the near-term docket in Congress, what's to happen with health care?

Both houses have passed a bill. Relatively minor differences could be worked out. What's the delay? Are the Democrats playing dead for now, only to (improbably) pick up HCR down the road, as Rahm Emanuel suggests?

Jonathan Chait details why such a strategy would be beyond disaster for Democrats:

Suppose there's no upside at all to passing health care reform. McArdle assumes, without explicating her reasons, that walking away from the issue is a way for Democrats to cut their losses. Why, though, would that be the case? Passing the bill may or may not make it more popular, letting it die is surely going to make it less popular. If the bill dies, then it's the subject of lengthy, painful postmortem coverage detailing its flaws and mistakes. It becomes the symbol of big government run amok, and the 60 Senate Democrats and 220 House Democrats who voted for it will suffer politically all the more. Moreover, the already-demoralized liberal base would become apoplectic with the Democratic Party. 1994 was bad, but passing a bill through both chambers then sitting by and letting it die is the kind of behavior that makes even the most pragmatic Democratic voter want to punish his own party.

In sum, I'm totally unpersuaded by the argument that Democrats will let health care die because it's in their interest to do so. It's not. It's a suicide pact, and pretty much every liberal I know -- the kinds of liberals who understand the need for compromise and running to the center -- will be there to hold the pillow over their face if they do it.

They've come this far, and forget them picking it up beyond a few months from now, when 2010 campaigning kicks into gear. Dropping everything at this point would be proof of a monumental retreat by a party that had the guns, Jan. 2009 AND now, to get this done. Abandoning this would only serve as a cudgel for Republicans to use against them. I think it would mean large GOP gains in 2010 and 2012, an albatross attached to any kind of agenda Obama would have left to enact in the next two years and a severe loss of respect and belief in Obama as a leader.

Pass it, you still have detractors, but at least you climbed the mountain and have the scars to prove it. Many with lingering consternation of what the bill means will come around when they see how moderate and pragmatic much of it is.

Stopping now, or delaying too long, is sheer lunacy.