How Obama will -- and won't -- lead on health care reform

Steve Benen has the very section of Obama's meeting with Senate Democrats (cut up and elided) that I was struggling to transcribe from the tape:

"All that's changed in the last few weeks is our party has gone from having the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second-largest Senate majority in a generation," Obama said. "If anybody is searching for a lesson from Massachusetts, I promise you the answer is not to do nothing."

He added, "I know these are tough times to hold public office. The need is great; the anger and anguish are intense." While "the natural political instinct is to tread lightly, keep your head down and play it safe," he said, Democrats should remember the promises they made in their election campaigns.

"So many of us campaigned on the idea that we're going to change this health-care system" Obama said. ..So many of us looked people in the eye who had been denied because of a pre-existing condition, or just didn't have health insurance at all ... and we said we were going to change it..*. "Well, here we are with a chance to change it....I hope we don't lose sight of why we're here. We've got to finish the job on health care."  We've got to finish the job on regulatory reform. We've got to finish the job, even though it's hard."

Wise men, stateswomen...today's Democrats?

Appalled by the prospect that a Brown victory in the Massachusetts Senate race could scuttle health care reform -- and Obama's presidency -- Andrew Sullivan fumes:

What you see here is the fathomless awfulness of the Democrats. Too fractured and listless to get a solid health insurance bill through both Houses in anything like the time they wanted, too disorganized to make a strong and coherent case for their proposal...

But losing Kennedy's seat is a near-epic failure. If health reform fails, it will be because of a fatal combination of Democratic hubris and Democratic weakness. They just won the presidency and both Houses. And this is what they manage? Really, who wants to belong or support a party this goddamn useless?