The Health Bill Will Pass. Won't It?

I think they have it. If they don't have the votes for the best and purest version of the bill, I think they at least have a fallback position which holds 60 votes.

I believe this has to be true because you wouldn't risk your presidency and place in history and epochal humiliation if you did not have the votes. You would not have brought it down to the wire like this.

On the other hand, I could very well be wrong. It is not just the Obama White House, but something about all politicians that, these days, makes them look like amateurs. None of them fill you with confidence. Nobody seems in control.

Harry Reid certainly does not seem like Lyndon Johnson, who, as majority leader of the Senate, was never wrong on a vote count. Or, if he was wrong, he had a deal or the muscle or compromising pictures to make it right. Instead of seeming like a man who relishes twisting arms and breaking wills, Harry Reid seems annoyed and put-upon.

This may be the nature of politics. It's just not an inside game anymore. What it is is an assault from everywhere else. "Inside the beltway" used to be a reference to the insularity of power. But the insiders seem naked now, unprotected, cowed, desperate to avoid the cat calls and insults.

Everybody inside the beltway has his or her head down.

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