Note to House Dems: Pass the Bill and Move On

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo responds to the possible loss of a Senate seat by the Democrats in today's Massachusetts special election and the potential effect on health care reform legislation.

I think this is very simple. And we're about to see what the congressional Dems are made of. Obama too...If Brown wins, I don't think it makes sense to continue the negotiations or trying to pass a bill through the senate prior to seating Brown. The House simply needs to pass the senate bill without revisions and await changes that will be passed in a separate bill that can be pushed through reconciliation (the content of a particular piece of legislation is critical to determining whether the rules allow it to go through reconciliation). Letting the bill die now would be stupid, frankly suicidal in political terms and good evidence that the Democrats just aren't prepared to govern the country.

Let me hazard a prediction. If the Dems push through this bill now, bank the accomplish and move on to selling it and working the jobs agenda, it'll be a bad but not terrible November. If they all run to ground after a Brown victory, it's really all bets are off. Why? Because this is about meta-politics. There are all sorts of reasons for the troubles the Dems are now having. They're overwhelmingly linked to the catastrophically bad economy -- whether that's because of 10% unemployment, the spending that has been required to keep the economy from slipping into a Depression, the bailouts of the banks etc. But the key reason, the ones the Dems have some control over, is their ability to act and deliver on an agenda.

Ezra Klein of The Washington Post agrees. So does Jonathan Chait of The New Republic.

--Ballard Burgher