If you were to ask me right now whether healthcare reform will actually pass, I would probably say, "Don't ask." Because to even entertain the notion that it won't pass is too awful to fully comprehend. The House progressives who are refusing to pass the Senate bill and finish this thing aren't helping progressives, they're not helping the party, they're not helping the bankruptcies that will continue at a pace of one every 30 seconds due to medical expenses -- the 44,000 deaths per year due to a lack of insurance.
(By the way, you tell someone who's dying that the government will subsidize most of their insurance bill, and I assure you, they won't care wherever the fuck the insurance is coming from -- Aetna, Wellpoint, the government, or from a kill-biller's ass. They'll take it and then tell you various ways to shove your righteous "principled" indignation.)
Even putting aside all the moral arguments for passing this bill -- all the lives and homes it will save -- a crassly political calculation should have left Democrats rushing towards passage. Given all that, I guess you've got to give the Democrats credit for feeling their irrational terror authentically. I'm not sure that's the sort of authenticity voters are looking for, however.
The terror they might've experienced yesterday and again today is nothing compared with the day when a Republican Congress votes to impeach President Obama. But you know, maybe we'll... ????... single-payer!