Health bill vote imminent

We will see in about an hour whether Senate Democrats can get their health care reform bill into the debate stage, but meanwhile it is fascinating to hear the tenor of the debate-to-be in advance of the cloture vote on C-SPAN’s live feed.

Curiously, given all the attention paid to teabagger fury, it is the Democrats showing real passion in defending the reform package. New Jersey’s Robert Menendez, hardly known as an inspired orator, shook his finger at the opposition an hour ago for being ‘on the wrong side of history for a century’ from the New Deal through civil rights and environmental legislation, Medicare, Medicaid and a half-dozen other historic government actions.

Tom Harkin from Iowa told his Democratic colleagues that ‘now is not the time to go wobbly in the knees’, recognizing that it was not the weak Republican minority that threatens to derail the reform but his own supposed allies.

The Republican arguments against going forward with the bill illustrate the risks they took on by openly defying Obama to get anything at all done on health. By bragging that they were going to bury reform in its cradle, speakers like Charles Grassley can’t really get much mileage denouncing the White House for ‘putting together one extreme plan after another’, given that he and his colleagues refused to even discuss them.

Joe Wilson’s rude shout-down of Obama continues to echo through the chamber tonight as the vote nears. Whatever happens to the bill and however health insurance and medical care in this country are changed, we will all know exactly who was responsible for it and who dug in their heels to keep things as they are.