Memo to Democratic Congressional Reps

You have one chance. Pass the sen­ate health care bill.

The pub­lic does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the house bill and the sen­ate bill.

You already vot­ed for the house bill.

Your repub­li­can oppo­nent in the fall is going to pin that vote on you incessantly.

And those who sup­port reform are not going to be all that enthu­si­as­tic because you did not pass it.

So you have the worst of both worlds: blame for the vote, and no cred­it for passage.

The repub­li­cans had one goal: pre­vent the pas­sage of health care.

They have almost succeeded.

The only bills (of any con­se­quence) that will pass between now and Jan­u­ary 2011 (if not lat­er) are bills through rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. The repub­li­cans have zero incen­tive to coop­er­ate with any­thing. Obstruc­tion has served them very well in the polls.

Health care reform can­not be done sole­ly through reconciliation.

Pass the sen­ate bill and then fix what can be fixed through reconciliation.

That is all.