QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 9:38 A.M. ET:   From Rich Lowry, in the New York Post:

Harry Reid can rightly claim to be making history.

If he passes health-care re form, he'll depend on a series of historic "firsts." It'd be the first time Congress had passed a major new entitlement program without bipartisan support; it'd be the first time it passed such a program without popular support; and the first time it passed such a program without knowing or particularly caring what's in it.

Very well said, and true.

This isn't the behavior of a self-confident majority secure in the knowledge that history is on its side. In fact, it's panicked, weaselly and willfully careless. The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote of the "paranoid style" in American politics. Obama Democrats have perfected the "impatient style." Reid's latest exertions fit the pattern of a headlong rush to a slapdash social democracy, justified by whatever arguments happen to be at hand and effected by whatever means necessary.

Reid acts like a hunted man for good reason. The RealClearPolitics average has 53.5 percent opposed to the Democrats' health-care plan and 37.7 favoring it. A CNN poll last week found the public against it by nearly 2-1. The numbers have gotten worse as the Senate has debated the measure in all its varied splendor -- the tax hikes, the Medicare cuts, the abortion funding. Reid is like the tormented narrator of Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum": With the clock's every tick, a vast blade promising doom swings nearer.

And...

If the health-care bill is necessary and wise, it will withstand a temporary defeat. Democrats could campaign on it around the country next year. They could rebuild public support, turning around the polls. They could enhance their majority in the House and the Senate, bringing more Democrats to Washington determined to pass it. That's how you usually pass historic legislation in a system naturally inclined to the status quo.

But Reid knows long-term persuasion isn't an option. As his approval rating sags below 40 percent back in Nevada, even he might not be returning to Washington after 2010. Every day, every hour matters in the now-or-never calculus of Democrats who already feel their moment slipping agonizingly away.

COMMENT:  It happens that I have a routine medical appointment today.  And I have found myself wondering whether I'll be able to see this same excellent doctor next year, and if I'll have any choice in health insurance.  At this stage in the debate, I shouldn't have to wonder.  But the deliberations in Congress are among the most secretive I've ever seen.  The American people, doctors and patients, are excluded from the room.

December 15, 2009