I have been trying to come to terms with the blow to health care reform accomplished by the Coakley disaster. I do so by sitting in my chair with my dog wrapped around me like a boa (he doesn't itch and he breathes very evenly) and listening to "Pal Joey". There is a song in "Pal Joey" that is apropos. It is called "Play It The Hard Way" (and then you will succeed). Obama played it the hard way; Coakley didn't; and so health care reform probably will not succeed.

I am not second guessing the Obama game plan. It made sense to let Congress draw up the bill because otherwise nothing could have gotten through; it made sense to spend part of the summer trying to win over Charles Grassley and Olympia Snowe (Will Snowe now have a last minute conversion, save the day, and become a historical figure for having done so? Maybe so. Everything is at sixes and sevens.) It also made sense, once it was clear that the Republicans were just saying no, waiting upon events to derail the health care bill, to pursue the sixty vote Senate strategy. All that was required was for Kennedy and Byrd to stay alive, and even that was not really essential because they would be replaced by Democrats, wouldn't they? Just grind out the yardage and a bill would be signed by State of the Union Day and the nation would treat it as a great accomplishment once they got over the sausage grinder that produced it and they began to enjoy, right away, some of its benefits. It would be a triumph to run on come November.

But, to paraphrase Josh Lyman, Jeb Bartlet’s chief legislative aide and the campaign manager for his successor, there are demographics and candidates and issues and then there are surprises. The defeat of Coakley was a surprise. Yes, as Lorenz Hart advised, she should have run hard all the way and, yes, Axelrod should have been all over her to make sure she did, her defeat as much his fault for not minding the store as hers for not being driven enough to campaign as if it were a dead heat rather than a race in which the polls showed her to be fifteen points ahead. I don't know, though, the extent to which Axelrod kept hands off a state supposedly owned by the Kennedys. The Illinois-Bay State alliance, as old as the JFK nomination, may be fraying. But let's not, as the pundits are doing, make the health care debacle a referendum on Obama or on his strategy, either political or legislative. Obama was probably closest to the mark, as he so often is, when he offered the reflection that the same distrust of politics as usual led both to his victory and to Coakley's defeat.

I don't know how to rescue anything much from the shambles of health care reform. The Republicans will not sign up (unless there are defections) to even a minor bill. They want to start all over again, which means do nothing. And Obama has to move on to a jobs program and to bank reform, both of which are good campaign issues. The result is that once again health care reform will not have passed. It is a third rail of politics for reasons, as has been suggested in this blog, that have to do with people not wanting their fears of death aroused and so preferring whatever it is they have now to cling to rather than for any rational reason-- except, of course, that fear of death is perfectly rational even if there isn't much to be done about it and so all one can do is suppress the feeling.

What the Democrats can do is move on to planning for November. I think there is a way to do so that will increase their majorities. Everybody says how lucky it is that the Democrats have Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh to kick around rather than have serious Republican figures to contend with. But that is to neglect the Tea Party base that supports both of those people. Something has to be done to drive people away from the Tea Party, and I think there is a way to do it. I have not noticed on the air very much attention paid to strict Tea Party advocates. A New York Times Magazine article a few weeks ago had Marco Rubio, Charlie Crist's opponent in the Florida Republican Senatorial Primary, on the front page. But a long article about the ins and outs of Florida politics spent just a paragraph or two discussing Rubio’s views, as if they were so worthy of contempt that the only thing worth discussing were his followers. I would suggest that the media, including the MSNBC crowd, invite the leaders of the Tea Party to expound on their views. I think they will reveal themselves as being just blowhards, long on gas, short on actual suggestions for what to do. Do away with government so that there are no zoning laws so that downtown LA can look like Haiti if an earthquake occurs? Let the financial system fail so that American money is worth nothing? I hope that Brown is on Meet The Press this weekend to explain himself. I am not sure he will be able to. Arnie Schwarzenagger may have been elected in California as a wild card but remember that he is also a policy wonk who basically knows what he is talking about. Hold that out as the test the Tea Party people have to pass. They have to show they are able to govern, not just a collection of sentiments. If handled correctly, voting for the Tea Party will be like voting for Hamas. I know Hamas won, but I trust the American people are more reasonable than those who live in Palestine. Otherwise, we will all have to throw in the towel. Ed Rendell said the other night that you have to risk being defeated for what you believe in if you are going to win. The American experiment, I will add, continues to be an experiment.