I feel for those who can no longer stomach the health care reform bill wending its way through the Senate right now. You've got Obama standing on the sidelines as the public option dies, abortion being horse traded around, Nelson transparently raking in huge kickbacks for his state in return for his vote, and of course, you've got Lieberman punching progressives square in the face. It hurts, I'm angry, and I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what I would do if I were Obama, or if I were Reid, or if I were Russ Feingold.

But I know this bill's still gotta pass. It's easy for a lot of us to feel like it's not worth doing if the bill doesn't have a public option, if it means more money for insurance companies, if it doesn't represent "real reform" or whatever. But I don't think any of the lefty bloggers chanting to kill the bill are heads of families of four that make $29,000 a year and can't afford health insurance. If this bill dies, it will be a lot longer than the 15 years that it took Democrats to recover after Clinton messed it up. And during all that time, the insurance companies will be just as rapacious as ever. Public option or no, this bill will help.

Nate Silver and I appear to be soulmates on the issue, and he'll do a much more educated job of defending it than me. It's telling to me that the left only turned on this bill after Joe Lieberman stuck his head in. When the public option was removed, at the behest of a few moderates, there was, amazingly enough, only a minimal firestorm. When Reid met with his Gang of 10 and came out with the government-negotiated plan through GPO plus the Medicare expansion, somehow the left seemed to swallow the acid and take it.

It's once Lieberman said no to the Medicare expansion that everyone exploded. And honestly, I think it's because it really seemed as if Lieberman just wanted to piss off liberals. Fuck, even I think that's a major part of it, and I seem to be willing to grant good faith to just about anybody. So while Lieberman has lost that faith with me, and I also feel the immense anger and humiliation that comes with having one douchebag of a man (and to be fair, a few other moderate senators who were probably letting Joe be their proxy) stand in the way of a public option, I am not going to let that distort my perception of this legislation.

It still has the gov't-negotiated plan administered through the Office of Personnel Management. It still blocks insurance companies from basing premiums on preexisting conditions or gender, and from removing coverage when you get sick. It still has the individual mandate on insurance, which (along with generous subsidies for the poor) will lower premiums for everyone and get more people covered. It will do good.

So, that's how I feel. I'm settled in now to watch it pass, and apparently so are Democrats I'm happy to see that the Democratic party is able to come together over something of this magnitude, and I'm really quite enjoying watching the Republican Party go completely apoplectic over it. The mindless fury of tea partiers and Republicans like Coburn and DeMint, more than anything, is a sign to me that we are still doing just fine.