"Do your job," is one of the saying's most associated with NFL coach Bill Belichick.

If health care passes this week, it will---to a significant degree---be because people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama have done their job...and done it well.

As Booman and others have pointed out repeatedly in the past year, our government contains numerous veto points that make progressive change difficult.  As much as many of us have been infuriated at times at Pelosi, Reid, Obama and other Washington Democrats during this long year of struggling to pass health care reform, they are on the verge of doing it.  They have done their jobs.

Pelosi and her leadership team pushed the bill through three committees, reconciled them, and passed a public option on the House floor by the narrowest of margins.  Reid and his leadership team held all 60 Democrats together through multiple votes to pass a Senate bill before Christmas.  Obama crafted and led a strategy after Scott Brown's victory to bring the Democrats back together and on the verge of tomorrow's House vote.  Here's hoping they can pull it off.

P.S.  Much of Obama's first year was spent attempting to slow down and stop the damage done by Bush's administration, and by the conservative movement (e.g., the Iraq War, the Great Recession).

If health care reform passes, we may look back on this as the moment when, for the first time in 40 years, the US stopped moving to the right and began (barely, haltingly...but noticeably) moving to the left.

The Dems are dropping the deem and pass rule.  One less thing for GOP to bitch about.

They're on C-SPAN

there's Pelosi...designer duds and nary a hair out of place..

GO NANCY!!

Slightly OT: TPM is reporting that Tea Party pecker-heads are running thru the halls of Congressional office buildings harassing Democrats. Why is this being allowed? The double standard is appalling me! Can you even imagine anti-Iraq War protesters being allowing in those buildings, much less yelling and being menacing toward Republicans? Heck, SWAT squads and paddy wagons would have cleared them out immediately. And the media would have reported it was a good thing, too. Are they waiting for someone to get hurt before they guard the doors and block the entry of these crazy people?

So I guess the House has decided that they are going to trust the Senate to not f@#k them and go ahead and vote straight up on the Senate bill after "fixing it" prior to the vote.

Hopefully that signed letter from over 50 Senators to amend the bill will carry more weight than all the "sternly worded letters" of days gone by.

Tea Party Protests: 'Ni**er,' 'Faggot' Shouted At Members Of Congress
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/20/tea-party-protests-nier-f_n_507116.html

"A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-M.D.) had been spit on by a protestor. Rep. John Lewis (D-G.A.), a hero of the civil rights movement, was called a 'ni--er.' And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president's speech, shrugged off the incident.

But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.

"It was absolutely shocking to me," Clyburn told the Huffington Post. "Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday... I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins... And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus."

"It doesn't make me nervous as all," the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. "In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else..."