At the very wise suggestion of SiubhanDuinne, I’m scheduling this from the early morning hours, just in case none of us front-pagers are available when the (oh please Goddess let it be) final shouting match starts. How’s it going?
***Update [Tim]***
Bart Stupak declared that he will vote yes. It’s all over except the shouting.
***Update 2 [Tim again]***
Atrios is uncharacteristically full of it here. Republicans made a mistake by pitting this contest as an apocalyptic fight to the death. The bigger a fight they pick, the greater losers they look
Why do people like Atrios constantly criticize the media? Among other things, most reporters don’t care a whit for policy. They just report horserace and personality because it’s easy. Sunday talk shows never talk about whether health care reform will be good for America, they argue whether it will be good for the Democratic or Republican party. It’s insipid, but it will bite the GOP in the ass here. Nobody will care about their convoluted (and wrong) arguments about why Obamacare will murder grandma and sicken babies. Republicans lost the big fight of 2010 and the media narrative will swell with stories about how McConnell overreached and tea partiers frightened the sensible factions into hiding and Olympia Snowe should have tried harder to work with Obama.
Republicans did nothing for decades but encourage media Heathers to focus on inane personality narratives (reporters spent endless weeks debating what windsurfing says about John Kerry and precisely zero discussing what BCCI says about him). It’s sad but perfectly karmic that their own frankenstein monster will bite them in the ass.