What does this have to do with anything of actual importance? I feel like the past months of following the health care debate have been a condensed version of my experience as a Pirates fan. Every time a new package or compromise or new procedural avenue is announced, I convince myself that it’s the one that’s going to get the bill through. And every time, thus far, I’ve been disappointed. So with the White House house announcing that “this is the week!” and the House and Senate having a tentative agreement on how to get the bill through, my reaction is both to celebrate “here we go!” and to lament “here we go again. . .”

In one way, the Democrats inability to pass a health care bill is a lot sadder than the Pirates inability to put together a winning season. (OK, in two ways: whereas passing a health care bill involves giving millions of people access to medical care, the Pirates having a winning season involves winning some baseball games.) While the Pirates’ losing records are consistent with the lack of talent, poor management, and low payrolls they’ve had over the past two decades, the Democrats have failed to pass a health care bill despite large majorities in both houses of Congress. Despite the fact that Republicans have used every procedural tool at their disposal to block legislation since they’ve been in the minority, and despite the fact that Republicans used every tool they could to pass legislation when they were in the majority, Democrats have, to this point, been unwilling to push the limits of the rules so that a simple majority vote could pass the bill. So while there’s a lot to be encouraged by in Harry Reid’s recent “get tough” letter to Mitch McConnell, it also has a “what took you so long?!?” quality.

McConnell, for his part, calls Democratic efforts to pass the bill by majority vote “a raw exercise of legislative power.” I’m not sure exactly what work the word “raw” does in that sentence, but passing a piece of legislation is no doubt an exercise of legislative power. Which is, you know, kind of an appropriate thing for the legislative branch to do.

-AR