HISTORY is full of comforting-slash-disquieting counterfactual
mind-twisters. For example, without the re-election of George
Bush, we wouldn't have Obama 44. Is yesterday's health-care vote
an example? At lunch yesterday a liberal friend from Boston
offered the comment that it was Scott Brown's victory in the
Massachusetts Senate race that snapped the Democrats to
attention and enabled yesterday's vote. At the time, we all
remember, Mr Brown's victory was received as a crippling blow
for Democrats: a Republican elected to Ted Kennedy's seat, who
would deny Democrats the 60-vote majority they needed to pass
the health-care reform that Mr Kennedy wanted to make his
legacy. Some prominent Democrats publicly announced that the
effort was dead. But that's not what happened. Deprived of the
60th vote, Democrats realised that they could get around the
issue by using reconciliation. And Barack Obama, who previously
had been content to let Congress flounder on its own, seemed to
realise that if he didn't take a more p