Let's hope it's a trend.

Right up until the moment the votes reached 216, I was afraid the bill would fail at the last minute, and that an announcement would come out saying "We really wanted to pass health care reform, but we were afraid that the Republicans might get mad," and that would be that.

Hopefully with the reconciliation bill the Democrats will have the balls to actually fight for what they've spent so much time claiming to believe in; but I'm afraid that it will dissolve into another "41 lockstep Republicans vs. 59 unherdable cats" debacle.

It's enough.

too bad they backed down when they omitted putting in a public option.

Keep out your big stick and move on to financial reform.

The other thing was that they realized they had a Constitutional majority and didn't let "gentleman's agreements" that the Republicants had fractured many times get in their way.