Obamacare is dead.

The voters of Massachusetts today drove a stake through the heart of the beast and nothing can revive it now.

Well, almost nothing.

Some Democrats have been hinting that they might go ahead and jam a health care reform measure through anyway. One option is to bring it to a vote before Scott Brown is sworn in. Another is to treat it as a budget measure (which would require dropping some non-budgetary provisions such as requiring people to purchase health insurance) and then use the reconciliation process to pass it by simple majorities in each house. A third option is for the House to pass the Senate version of the bill.

I don’t believe that, at this point, any of these are serious options for the Democrats. Midterm elections are less than 10 months away. What will be uppermost in the minds of every House member and a third of the Senators is survival. Public outrage at back room deals and vote-buying à la the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback and Cash-for-Cloture have severely limited the ability of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to marshal their troops. They are about to learn what it is like to try to herd cats. Read more »