The Great Woman Theory Of History

I wrote this the day after Scott Brown was elected to the Senate:

I was going to post something about the prospects for still passing a comprehensive health care bill, but I fear that any such analysis would quickly turn into an epithet-laced invective against Democratic cowardice. I’d like to think that Democrats will have their little freak-out and then, you know, actually do what we elected them to do. Never mind that Obama already is signaling his willingness to accept a thin gruel of a bill that would do little more than give people the right to bankrupt themselves buying insurance. But that’s just Obama doing his elite Jedi mindfuck with the opposition, right?

Right?

Turns out, I was kind of right, but that’s only because I was listening to smart people like Jonathan Chait and Jonathan Cohn. The Democrats had their freak-out and then realized they had to go all in rather than try to pull off some sort of Clintonesque triangulation hocus-pocus. But that wouldn’t have happened if not for the combined heavy lifting of the President and Nancy Pelosi. I’m not surprised that Obama stepped up, but I had never thought much of Pelosi until recently. She initially struck me as just another career political stiff without much vision or charisma. I was wrong. She kept her head when almost every other Democrat was ready to wave the white flag. She gave the President the cover he needed to keep selling the idea of comprehensive reform. And she rounded up the votes in a Democratic caucus that is anything but homogenous. Without much flash or drama, she got the job done. When the book about the passage of the health care bill is written, she will be regarded as the President’s indispensable partner.