E.J. Dionne is pretty excited that NETWORK, an organization of Catholic nuns, supports the Senate health care bill and says it doesn't use federal dollars to pay for abortions. That claim isn't true (more on that soon), but the endorsement is supposed to give Democrats cover to vote for the bill.

The Fort Collins Coloradoan:

"I have very closely taken a look at the compromise version, I read the (Congressional Budget Office) budget analysis today and I have decided that I am going to support this bill and vote for the bill," the Fort Collins Democrat said.

Her home paper, The Denver Post, on the bill, last week:

A perspicacious reader writes:

What, of course, is interesting about the arm twisting of undecided congressmen is how little Joe Biden is involved. You would think a guy who was in Congress for forever would be able to convince colleagues, or at least would be tasked with such an assignment. That Obama is doing it personally reflects little confidence in Biden and also a micro-managing of the legislation he refused to be involved in drafting and ironing out. Compare with Bush, who delegated this responsibility to Cheney, who was apparently far more effective than either Biden or Obama. Certainly his victories were less public so there were not quite so many process stories, which seem like the only articles coming out of the White House any more.

One possibility: Obama doesn't want Biden anywhere near Congress because he fears our intrepid vice president, God love him, would make yet another silly gaffe.

Let's set the table. You can read the reconciliation text here. The preliminary CBO analysis is here.

Dr. Coburn speaks. But will Democrats listen?

Rep. Stephen Lynch has just released the following statement:

Congressman Lynch does not support the Senate version of healthcare reform because it has stripped most of the serious reform from the House version of the bill and rewards insurance companies instead.

As MKH notes below, Obama has postponed his Asia trip until June. Liberals are excited; surely Obama wouldn't have canceled the trip unless he was assured the bill would pass. I mean, it's not like he's been embarrassed by a last-minute travel decision before ... 

Sen. Kent Conrad, speaking to Roll Call and Fox, says the Senate will likely be unable to pass unchanged the reconciliation bill the House passes, even if the House can pass it:

In order to obtain a friendly CBO score, the Democrats lowered the threshold at which health insurance plans will be subject to the excise tax. That threshold is now pegged at inflation, which means more and more plans will be subject to bracket creep over time.

Yet labor coalition Change to Win says it supports the revised Senate bill. And AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka is in talks with his executive committee over the changes to the tax. The AFL-CIO is expected to support the bill, as well, despite the changes. Why?

Yesterday Trumka was summoned to an unscheduled meeting at the White House. One wonders what he was told. Could it have been that the regressive changes to the taxes and subsidies shouldn't sway his support for the bill, since the Democrats can always cancel them once they kick down the door?

In his press conference today, the first held in the Rose Garden, Robert Gibbs announced that Obama will push off his trip to Indonesia and Australia to June so that he can be around for the health-care reform vote, expected to happen Sunday.

"The president greatly regrets the delay," Gibbs said. "But passage of health care reform is of paramount importance, and the president is determined to see this battle through."

From Hotline:

A key House Dem has begun informing party leaders he plans to vote against health care legislation both on the House floor and in the rules committee, on which he sits.

Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-NY), a sophomore Dem who had a tougher-than-expected re-election bid in '08, has told the Dem caucus he will vote against the bill.

House majority leader Steny Hoyer has informed his colleagues of the CBO health bill score. Politico reports: 

The bill would cost $940 billion, and reduce the deficit by $130 billion over the first 10 years and $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years. The deficit numbers Democrats have been most worried about, and will be key to convincing moderates to coming on board with the bill.

Keep in mind that the second decade estimate is incredibly speculative. Overall, though, this score may move some undecided congressmen into the Yes column. Whether those congressmen will be members who voted No last year is another question entirely, however. Perhaps they will have seen this video:

More CBO details, and the final reconciliation language, are expected later today. A Sunday morning vote is now likely. Gentlemen: Start your engines! The countdown has begun.

The link to the full, new CBO score is, here (PDF).

But this is health care. There is never any sense of closure or finality to be had, so I give you the CBO's up-front caveat about this score:

Historian Robert Darnton on early modern blogs:

Short, scurrilous abuse proliferated in all sorts of communication systems: taunts scribbled on palazzi during the feuds of Renaissance Italy, ritual insult known as “playing the dozens” among African Americans, posters carried in demonstrations against despotic regimes, and graffiti on many occasions such as the uprising in Paris of May–June 1968 (one read “Voici la maison d’un affreux petit bourgeois”). When expertly mixed, provocation and pithiness could be dynamite—the verbal or written equivalent of Molotov cocktails.

This subject deserves more study, because for all of their explosiveness, the blog-like elements in earlier eras of communication tend to be ignored by sociologists, political scientists, and historians who concentrate on full-scale texts and formal discourse.

To appreciate the importance of a pre-modern blog, consult a database such as Eighteenth Century Collections Online and download a newspaper from eighteenth-century London. It will have no headlines, no bylines, no clear distinction between news and ads, and no spatial articulation in the dense columns of type, aside from one crucial ingredient: the paragraph. Paragraphs were self-sufficient units of news. They had no connection with one another, because writers and readers had no concept of a news “story” as a narrative that would run for more than a few dozen words. News came in bite-sized bits, often “advices” of a sober nature—the arrival of a ship, the birth of an heir to a noble title—until the 1770s, when they became juicy. Pre-modern scandal sheets appeared, exploiting the recent discovery about the magnetic pull of news toward names. As editors of the Morning Postand the Morning Herald, two men of the cloth, the Reverend Henry Bate (known as “the Reverend Bruiser”) and the Reverend William Jackson (known as “Dr. Viper”) packed their paragraphs with gossip about the great, and this new kind of news sold like hotcakes. Much of it came from a bountiful source: the coffee house.

Fantastic stuff. And almost as gripping as this story about a surfing alpaca.

More bad news for Democrats in the latest Pew survey. Forty-eight percent oppose the health bill, 38 percent approve. Obama's job approval is down to 46 percent, with 43 percent disapproval. A majority says health care costs will increase despite passage of health care reform. Ask voters what they think of Congress, and the four words you are most likely to hear are “dysfunctional,” “corrupt,” “self-serving,” and “inept.” "Tickle fight" didn't make the cut.

On a brighter note, the public continues to admire and like Obama personally, even if they are deeply divided when evaluating his job performance. And voters also say the war in Afghanistan is improving. Prosecution of the war there continues to be one of the president's strongest issues.

Even so, the more time the Democrats spend on health care, the worse their political situation becomes. A new PPP poll gives the GOP a three-point lead in the generic ballot. Republicans are intensely enthusiastic about the midterm election while Democrats are not. Obama's Gallup numbers are no good. And yet the Democrats press on and on and on.

The Democrats' race to pass health care reform is getting exhausting. It's not only the constant rush of developments to the story. The poor undecided congressmen are also tuckered out:

Rep. Jason Altmire has met with President Obama twice this month and received a phone call from Air Force One. Two planes circled his western Pennsylvania district, trailing banners urging him to vote against the health-care bill. And conservative "tea party" activists confronted him at his office, trying to force him to answer: "Are you for or against the bill?"

The pressure has been extreme over the past two weeks on Altmire and the few dozen House Democrats who say they still have not decidedhow they will vote on ambitious legislation designed to remake the nation's health-care system.

Says Bart Stupak: “All the phones are unplugged at our house — tired of the obscene calls and threats. [My wife] won’t watch TV,” Stupak said during an hourlong interview with The Hill in his Rayburn office. “People saying they’re going to spit on you and all this. That’s just not fun.”

A new Resurgent Republic poll released today finds a host of opportunities for Republicans among this fast growing group of Americans.

In an article summarizing the results of the survey, Ed Goes and Leslie Sanchez (both Resurgent Republic advisory board members) underscore the importance of this growing demographic group of Americans.

If the Democrats’ health care bill were a chemical, the Environmental Protection Agency might label it as a toxic substance lethal to incumbents.  More wavering House lawmakers are realizing this chilling electoral reality as the showdown vote approaches in the next several days.

What’s keeping vulnerable Democrats up at night? The likelihood that even voting “no”  might not be enough to protect some of them from the poisonous political atmosphere that has been building and that passage of the bill could further aggravate.