The Long, Hard, And Ultimately Futile, Slog Ahead For NancyCare

Some morning-after perspective after Saturday night's upheaval:

From HotAir:

"The Democrats wheedled, cajoled, begged, and finally abandoned its defense of abortion — truly a watershed moment — in order to get their version of ObamaCare passed … in the House of Representatives, where they enjoy a 75-seat majority.  In the end, they could only muster a five-vote win on Nancy Pelosi’s bill out of that strong majority.  Until this week, most had assumed that any ObamaCare bill would pass the House easily, but that the fight would be in the Senate.

So what does this 220-215 vote tell us?  Capitol Hill Democrats know that this bill is an albatross.  It’s true that Pelosi was able at the end to negotiate votes to allow a few at-risk Democrats that supported the bill to oppose it in the final vote, but even that tells a tale of fear and consciousness of unpopularity.  The razor-thin vote, as well as a number of earlier, more sincere defections, show that this bill was a radical and expensive approach to fix a 13% problem — and even most of the Democrats know it.

Now the focus swings to the Senate, where Harry Reid will have to gain supermajorities at least twice to allow the bill to proceed to a final vote.  That seems unlikely, although not impossible.  The process will slow down considerably from the jam-down Pelosi conducted in the lower chamber, perhaps even to a crawl if Tom Coburn makes good on his threat to have the bill read in its entirety on the Senate floor."

And this conclusion drawn by Professor Jacobson:

"Harry Reid needs to drop the public option to get a bill through the Senate. Nancy Pelosi needs to drop abortion coverage even for most private plans, to get a bill through the House.  The end result: If a bill is to pass both houses of Congress, it will have no public option and no abortion coverage."

Yes, the Senate now becomes the primary focus of NancyCare - I'd bet that that's where it meets its ultimate death.  Pelosi's failure to get even a modicum of bipartisan support in the House (except for one lone GOP vote) will ultimately spell failure for this tyrannical power-grab by 220 members.  And her decision to ram this monstrosity through at any cost - Senate and public opinion realities be damned - will do more damage to the Democrat brand than anything the GOP has ever thrown at them.  I suspect that the "tea party" protests of this past summer will now only intensify through the 2010 elections. It is beginning to feel like 1938.