Nobody will accuse Joe Biden of committing oratory, but nobody will accuse him of overstatement, either. When the Democrats in the House of Representatives passed a health care reform bill on Sunday, they did something that was thought to be impossible (after all, presidents since Teddy Roosevelt have sought to accomplish this); doomed by the hard math of political calculus (all year, my friend Lawrence O’Donnell, who as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan‘s chief of staff was one of those who vainly tried to pass health care reform in 1994, has been saying “I don’t know how you do it”); beyond the reach of a president who was thought to be better at speaking than accomplishing (but see CeCi Connally‘s amazing story in the Washington Post about how Obama closed the damn sale); helpful to a whole bunch of people 
(see Dave Leonhardt‘s analysis in the Times: “The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago. Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor. Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. . . .It is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.”; and ultimately, a great deal of fun (See Maureen Dowd in the Times: “One gleeful and relieved White House aide called the bill-signing ceremony in the East Room, packed with Democratic lawmakers snapping pictures and acting like obstreperous children, “an Old Spice moment.” “You could see it in their faces,” he said. “It was kind of like that Old Spice ad where the guy smacked himself on the cheeks and said, ‘Wow, that feels good!’ It was like they smacked themselves on the cheeks and said, ‘You are a member of Congress and now you can start doing things. Wow, that feels good!’ ””)
Days after the ebullient bill-signing, commentators like Joe Scarborough are still talking about how this bill will cause the Democrats to lose the House this fall. It ain’t going to happen. David Frum has it exactly right: the Republicans put everything they had into stopping this bill, and that included all kinds of over-the-top scare tactics and tremendous anger and meanness. And they lost. The Democrats are like the New York Giants of 2007: bumbling along, playing below their potential, until they woke up against the undefeated Patriots and played a game. Unlike the Democrats, they lost that game, but the way they played made them realize that belonged. And after that, no one could stop them, and they won the Super Bowl. Could this start the Dems on a roll?