[This is probably old news to people who've been closely following the Health Care Reform debate.]

As it stands right now, the Democrats stand a 50/50 chance of having their Health Care Reform plan defeated this Tuesday. After a year of fighting it out, all those long drawn-out debates, a summer of "death panels" cries of "socialism", idiots demanding the government stay out of their Medicare, and outraged yahoos bringing guns to townhall meetings, they finally got a bill through the major procedural roadblock in the Senate: the rule that says you need 60 votes to move a bill from the discussion stage (aka, to overcome the threat of 'filibuster' - where a bill simply sits in the discussion stage forever). If it passes that vote, it moves one step closer to where it can be voted on for real.

The Democrats started the process with 60 Senators ostensibly on their side: all the Democrats, an Independent and a Socialist (not a single Republican, of course). And if those 60 could be kept on-board, the bill was pretty much guaranteed to become law. Of course Democrats are notoriously hard to keep on the same page. It's a big, diverse party, with very little party discipline and an aversion to playing procedural hardball. So keeping those 60 together was a difficult process, and a painful process to watch for anyone who wanted Reform to pass. And that's why it took so long, and why the bill is far less far-reaching than it could have been; when every vote counts, the whims of every prima-donna Senator must be catered to, especially the more conservative of the Democratic Senators who were vehemently opposed to things like single-payer or extending Medicare to cover everyone, etc..

But, on Christmas Eve, the Senate had that procedural vote, the Democrats won it, and the bill moved into the stage where the try to reconcile it with the version the House passed. That's where it sits today. For extra procedural fun, if the bill changes in the reconciliation process, it then needs to pass another 60-vote procedural vote to get to the real vote.

It's truly the stupidest system ever.

Along the way, though, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, youngest brother of JFK, died. This was a man who had fought his entire 46-year Senate career to provide better health care for the poor, the disabled and children. Health Care Reform would've been his crowning achievement. Alas.

Kennedy's death took the Dems to 59 votes; but so long as Kennedy's seat remained unfilled or was filled by a Democrat, that was OK. The procedural vote could be met with 59 votes; the Republicans couldn't defeat it with their 40 votes. So, having passed that first hurdle, they've been taking their time with getting the bills reconciled.

Massachusetts, though, is having an off-cycle election to fill Kennedy's seat. And the vote is this Tuesday. The Dems, in their infinite stupidity, chose a lackluster candidate to run for that seat and basically ignored the race until last week, when polls showed that the race was a dead heat, or worse: the Republican was slightly ahead. And if that Republican wins, he will likely take office on Wednesday, which will give the GOP 41 votes, and will kill Health Care Reform (along with everything else the Democrats want to do) dead in its tracks. The whole year wasted, and a huge hit to Obama himself, since Health Care Reform is one of his signature issues.

I guess the thought that a Republican could win Ted Kennedy's seat never occurred to them. The Dems spent all their energy and attention getting over that first procedural vote, and while they are busy telling war stories and congratulating themselves, the Republicans are about to slip past the one spot the Dems thought they didn't have to defend. And if they make it past, they'll blow the whole thing up.

This weekend, Obama and all the big Dems are in MA, campaigning for Coakley, the Dem candidate. But polls haven't shown any effect, yet. She's still tied, or losing. Maybe they should've tried this a couple of weeks ago ?

What a bunch of clowns...