NP: D'Angelo, Voodoo

In the aftermath of the Scott Brown election, political reporters breathlessly trumpeted comments from the Democrats that they "didn't have the votes" in the House to pass the Senate bill as is.

This, in and of itself, didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that no one really seemed to ask the followup question. Are you going to try to get the votes? Just because someone isn't convinced something will work at first blush doesn't mean they can't be convinced, and Congress is, on its face, considered a deliberative body.

As Kevin Drum notes, it looks like they are, with either the Democratic leadership, the political press, or both having realized that politics is not a steady state. I don't know this was a breakdown of the press, or just a stage in the Democratic grieving process over losing Ted Kennedy's seat that had them saying silly things without thinking, but the moment hopefully seems to have passed.

The last week has involved a lot of thinking out loud from Washington, which may not be pretty sometimes, but it's sometimes necessary to work through a problem. I do it all the time. And, as I said before, just because it happens faster on the Internet doesn't mean it won't happen in the real world.