"Even hedged regrets are welcome, but the irony is that a Senator who says the parties need to work more together..."

"... will have as his main legacy the most partisan and polarizing legislation of modern times."

Had [Jim Webb] or any one of the 60 Democrats insisted that the Administration get Republican votes, or drop the bill's worst provisions, history would have been very different.

A second irony is that Democrats only had those 60 Senate votes because of a series of improbable and corrupt events. Mr. Webb won his race by a hair in 2006 after incumbent George Allen stupidly uttered the word "macaca," and the media portrayed him as racist. Alaska's Ted Stevens lost his seat in 2008 by 3,724 votes after he was convicted eight days before the election in a trial in which the Justice Department withheld crucial evidence. He was later exonerated. And Al Franken, who was trailing on Election Day, managed to steal the Minnesota recount in 2008 by 312 votes from a hapless Norm Coleman....

History... had you remembered those 3 incidents and the fact that all 3 were required to produce the 60 votes that allowed the Democrats to inflict Obamacare on us?

"We all remember Bush v. Gore."

Coleman's quest.

"Every time someone tries to hold Norm Coleman accountable, he runs to court to try to weasel his way out of it."

Al Franken does not like being sued for defamation. Who does? I hate to see political mud-slinging turned into lawsuits, even if there are plenty of people who will make the argument that if something were really a lie -- e.g., the "Swift Boat" attacks on John Kerry -- the candidate would have sued.

I thought conservatives loathed tort suits... not to suggest that it's fine for liberals to drag political battles into the courtroom.

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By the way, "Senator Franken"... won't that be weird? If it happens. Not really weirder than Sonny Bono in Congress. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California. Ah, I guess nothing about blurring the showbiz/politics line can be weird anymore. It's utterly banal.

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Did you know Sonny Bono's epitaph is "And The Beat Goes On"?