Ezra Klein is gettin' Feisty:
Centrist Democrats know what happened last time a popular young president failed in a massive push to reform the health-care system and lost his high public approval in the process. A historic number of centrist Democrats lost their jobs. More than 50 of them, in fact. Liberals, conversely, kept their seats, because their seats are safe.
The central political reality of health-care reform is that if the bill fails, the vulnerable centrists who are queasiest about supporting it will be the casualties of its collapse. Properly understood, Barack Obama's popularity is not very useful for pressuring wavering Democrats. If the president remains popular, they have little to fear. Rather, it's his unpopularity that should concern them.
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