And somehow I suspect that at that nadir for Reagan, commentators like Krauthammer and Gerson and Brooks would not be advising him to heed public opinion, give up on his agenda, and recognize that it’s madness to push through policies that were broadly unpopular. Au contraire. Fight, Mr President. Fight. In the end, even the conservatives – perhaps especially the conservatives – will respect you for it.

Today, he quotes the President’s speech in Ohio. He is fighting:

… So if I was trying to take the path of least resistance, I would have done something a lot easier. But I’m trying to solve the problems that folks here in Ohio and across this country face every day. And I’m not going to walk away just because it’s hard. We are going to keep on working to get this done — with Democrats, I hope with Republicans — anybody who’s willing to step up. Because I’m not going to watch more people get crushed by costs or denied care they need by insurance company bureaucrats. I’m not going to have insurance companies click their heels and watch their stocks skyrocket because once again there’s no control on what they do. So long as I have some breath in me, so long as I have the privilege of serving as your President, I will not stop fighting for you.

From watching the President all year – not to mention the 18 months before the November 2008 Election – I find myself surprised that other people are surprised that it has taken Obama this long to take a confrontational tone. That has never been his style. He has been inspirational, yes, and I believe that there are a lot of confrontational liberals who projected that personality onto him, but those who pay attention know that Obama shows a distaste for this kind of politics. Unfortunately, being the only sane person in a city-full of crazy people doesn’t get any results, and the President has, I think, finally figured that out.

The President is a really smart man, and unlike the last President we had, is ok with admitting mistakes. From Obama’s interview with George Stephanopoulos:

And, you know, If there’s one thing that I regret this year, is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us, that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And that I do think is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here –

STEPHANOPOULOS: That people would get it.

OBAMA: That people will get it. And I think that, you know, what they’ve ended up seeing is this feeling of remoteness and detachment where, you know, there’s these technocrats up here, these folks who are making decisions.

He believed that if he just ran the country competently (which he undoubtedly has), then people would appreciate him for it and he wouldn’t have to play the ugly side of politics. Too bad he is still the single sane man in the crazy town of Washington. Or maybe its a good thing for him. Massachusetts can be a wake-up call. The silver-lining. He now has an incentive to fight. Not just for health care reform, but for his presidency and what he wants it to represent. In the words of Sullivan: “Fight, Mr. President. Fight”.

But President Barack Obama’s first year has brought an unusual number of holds, and on unusually prominent positions. One year into the Bush administration, there were 70 appointees awaiting confirmation. One year into the Obama administration, there are 177. And dozens of those holds are directly affecting the agencies responsible for the United States’ security and foreign policy, amid two wars and an amped-up terrorism threat. The United States has no ambassador to Ethiopia, no head of the Office of Legal Counsel, no director at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, no agricultural trade representative.

So there you have it. 177 people who should be doing important government work are held up by partisan demands. And it is partisan – you can tell from the difference between President Obama’s unconfirmed nominees and previous administrations. It also has unintended side effects – besides the inefficiency of the federal government. Ezra Klein:

A little-noticed side effect of holds is that they reduce government accountability. There are 20 Treasury nominees awaiting confirmation. And that’s amidst the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Consider the implications of that, and not just in the performance of the Treasury Department. Many people — both Democrats and Republicans — want Obama to fire Geithner, or some of the people who work for him. But the chance of that happening is approximately zero so long as Obama can’t be confident in his ability to smoothly fill that position. If you can’t hire new people, then you can’t get rid of old people.

The White House has a full list of their nominees – confirmed and unconfirmed – HERE.

Overall, while I would probably take Coakley’s side of a 3:1 wager, her situation looks to be increasingly difficult. She is basically relying upon getting solid turnout from a “silent majority” of voters who have done little to make themselves seen and heard. We know that there are a huge number of potential such voters in Massachusetts, which remains a very blue state and which until the past three weeks had not behaved unusually in any obvious way. But the pollsters are no longer seeing and hearing from them.

So the question on everyones mind is: what does the result of tomorrows election say about the chances for health care reform? On the one hand, a win by Coakley would basically ensure the passage of a compromise bill, as negotiations between the Senate and the House have proceeded basically as expected, and both could pass the final bill in the next two weeks. However, if Brown wins, what happens? The Democrats would lose their “supermajority” of 60 seats in the Senate, and thus would be unable to break a Republican filibuster in the Senate. So, considering the stakes for not only the Democrats politically, but also more than 30 million uninsured Americans, what can we expect the Senate to do if Coakley cannot hold on?

Jonathan Chait at The New Republic has outlined the options for Congressional Democrats and the President:

1. Finish up the House-Senate negotiations quickly and hold a vote before Scott Brown is seated. Republicans will scream, but how could they scream any louder? It’s a process argument of murky merits that will be long forgotten by November.

2. Get the House to pass the Senate bill, and maybe use a reconciliation bill (which only needs a Senate majority to pass) to implement as many House-Senate compromises as possible.

3. Go back to Olympia Snowe. I have not seen any persuasive reporting, or even conjecture, about what Snowe is actually thinking. Her substantive demands have been met. By the end of the process, her only demand was to delay the bill by some unspecified time period, which is such a vacuous demand that it’s hard to believe it represents her actual beliefs. Did she turn against the bill completely? Did she decide that she couldn’t take the heat for voting yes? Or did she figure that, with sixty Democrats, her voted wouldn’t really be needed so there was no reason for her to take the heat? If options 1 and 2 fail, we may find out about Snowe.

Obviously, the alternative is option 4: Crawl into a hole and die

Setting aside the insanity of requiring 60% of a chamber to make something a law, as the Senate does with the filibuster, this incredibly unavoidable and very peculiar situation shows us another side of the insanity of Washington. It isn’t just the lawmakers. Its the Washington media. It doesn’t really matter what the situation is, every political situation must be explained by who won and who lost. Thus, the election tomorrow is only going to be discussed as a referendum on President Obama and the health care bill. If Coakley wins, it will most likely be by a narrow margin, which in the blue state of Massachusetts will be seen as a loss for Obama. If Brown wins, Democrats will more than likely still pass a bill by one of the methods that Chait described, and the Republicans and the media (who love a racket) will howl about how the Democrats are going against the will of the people. You can just tell its coming, and it is ridiculous. Not only will they have passed this bill with 59% of the Senate, but those 59 Senators represent 61.20% of the population of the United States (based on U.S. Census data). Not only THAT, but I really doubt that if Brown wins it will tell anyone anything about what the population of Massachusetts thinks about Obama or his health care plan. Massachusetts has universal health care, its plan is very similar to the current Senate plan (which is closer to what the final bill will look like), and it polls very highly. The only difference is that the Senate plan controls costs better than the Massachusetts plan that Republican Scott Brown voted for. Guess what Republicans like to pretend is the worst part of the health care bills? Its expense.

Will Fox News or MSNBC or CNN or Mike Allen (from Politico) or Mark Halperin (at Time) or any other MSM political reporter ever bring up any of these facts? No. They will ignore the fact that this election, whether Coakley wins or loses, is mostly about Coakley running a terrible campaign, being a lackluster candidate, Brown running a solid underdog campaign, and the economy being in bad shape due to the lack of any sort of fiscal sanity during President Bush’s term (yes, its still his fault).

But of course, this election is all about Obama, right?