Chris Cilizza reports a nice scoop:

When you consider the differences between Democrats and Republicans on health care, you probably think in terms of scale. Democrats want to enact a big reform, while Republicans favor incremental progress.

Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and a Special Correspondent for The Treatment.

There's been more positive attention of-late to the idea of high-risk pools. Some concrete numbers underscore why the idea doesn't deserve it.

--Jonathan Cohn on where health care stands as of now

--Richard Thaler on the all-gain, no-pain plan to auction off the radio spectrum

--Tim Noah on America's insufficiently frightened ruling class

--What happened to Hillary and Flynt Leverett?

--Charles Krauthammer actually has a sensible and amusing column today

--Jonathan Cohn summarizes the health care summit

--Damon Linker on conservatism and American exceptionalism

The question of the day is whether Democrats can get the votes in the House of Representatives to pass health care reform. Jonathan Cohn has a great summary of where things stand, including this quote:

For more than a month now, I've taken a stubbornly optimistic line on the fate of health care reform -- I've given it slightly better than even odds of passing all along. You've probably noticed that most political reporters have a very different take. They write about health care reform in the past tense, or at best as a very long shot.

Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and a Special Correspondent for The Treatment.

The Washington Post has an article today about Democratic efforts to repeal the filibuster. The article is evidence of how far reformers have to go to make headway against elite opinion.

Nate Silver (via Twitter):

Jonathan Cohn thinks Obama might be slow-walking the GOP into a #QuestionTime on health care reform. http://bit.ly/9F9ieL

Harold Pollack is a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Special Correspondent for The Treatment.

There must be 100 smart analyses of last week's State of the Union speech. Many of my blogosphere friends were happy with it. I was pretty dismayed. I thought the President needed to push much harder and with greater specificity for a comprehensive bill. A week later, I feel even worse.

The origin of my disquiet was ably expressed by Brown University professor James Morone in Wednesday morning's Los Angeles Times. Morone provided the best analysis of that address, even though his essay went to print before word one was spoken. Morone is a gifted scholar who works at the interface between history and political science. If you haven't read him, stop reading this column and do so.

His op-ed "Seeking their inner Trumans" identifies a crucial political problem.

The Democratic leaders have not gotten credit for running this difficult reform through the daunting congressional gantlet. It hasn't been pretty -- Democratic leaders are talking ruefully about sausage-making -- but they played the inside game brilliantly.

But they forgot to tell their story to the people…. The Republicans told their story with exquisite skill. "Death panels," socialism and "government takeover" were all colorful ways to opt for private markets over government policy.

What is remarkable -- given the eloquent man in the White House -- is that Democrats were too busy dealing to come up with a counter story…. Not just once, in a complicated speech, but every day and in ways that connect….

Part of the President's task was to place that inside game in broader perspective, to remind voters that there was an honorable purpose to all that sausage-making. Clawing for 60 votes is sordid when the goal is to pass another bloated agriculture or a fighter jet the Pentagon doesn't want. It's quite another thing when the goal is providing health insurance coverage for 30 million people.

Hi everyone--Mike Crowley here. I'll be blogging throughout the State of the Union tonight. Not liveblogging, exactly (Update: I succumbed), but refresh this thread for regular updates on the latest Speech of Obama's Life. Then, stay tuned to tnr.com for more fully-baked reactions from your other TNR favorites. (Click here for a transcript of Obama's speech and see below to read Jonathan Cohn's live Twitter coverage.)

9:13pm Black Tuesday tested the courage of our convictions? Hmm. But important to remind people how dire situation was a year ago.

9:14pm It is just HDTV or did Geithner not shave? Guess he had a long day.

9:20pm A good defense of the bank bailout, plus an assault on the banks. Obama's winning smile and sense of humor give his explanation a likeable sheen. He should have done more of that by now. (Geithner still looks, in a friend's words, "like he got hit by a truck.")

9:23pm Harry Reid caught yawning.

9:24pm I'm not sure that was the most persuasive defense I've heard of the stimulus bill. It came and went fast--a bit dependent on micro-anecdotes that won't persuade many Americans who think it was a pork fest.

9:25pm Key soundbite: "That is why jobs must be our number one focus in 2010, and that is why I am calling for a new jobs bill tonight." This would be what they call a pivot.

9:29pm Democrats have been vowing to end the overseas tax business break since at least 2004. Why didn't it happen last year?

9:30pm Read the full speech text here.

9:32pm "How long should we wait... Washington has been telling us to wait for decades." This is reminiscent of campaign rhetoric--the fierce urgency of now.

By sheer luck, I think I picked a fairly good time to go on vacation. Mainly what I missed is a bout of hysteria and elected Democrats coming around to the obvious. Last Wednesday, in the wake of the Coakley fiasco, I predicted that health care reform remained a better-than-even bet:

Harold Pollack is a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Special Correspondent for The Treatment.

At a low moment of the Second World War, a breathless young aide barged in on Winston Churchill to report some bad news. Showing the aplomb one fully achieves only within the pages of one’s own memoir, Churchill quotes himself responding: “I’ve heard worse.” That’s the resilience Democrats need.

Treatment readers already know that many health policy experts across the political spectrum support House passage of the Senate bill, with an accompanying fix of the bills various shortcomings through the reconciliation process. Like Paul Krugman, Jonathan Cohn, Ezra Klein, and Jacob Hacker, Tim Jost and I very much agree that this is the best approach.

Yesterday, Tim and I crafted a simple letter (shown below), which we emailed other health policy experts we know. Some are progressives who identify with a single-payer approach. Others are more politically moderate economists, sociologists, and political scientists. Still others identify with organized labor, medicine, or public health.

Within several hours, many outstanding scholars, activists, and practitioners signed on. Signers include Henry Aaron, David Cutler, Jon Gruber, Theda Skocpol, Paul Starr, and many others, including Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU.

Some people we contacted could not sign on, but reported that they are seeking the same goal through more private means. Virtually no one we contacted disagreed with this letter on either political or policy grounds. Our letter represents a broad consensus of those supporting health care reform.

We are so close to enacting a historic reform. Now is the time for calm and resolute Congressional action. The Massachusetts election was a setback. Democrats still have large majorities in both the Senate and the House. We’ve heard worse. It’s time to act.

Bill Clinton didn’t know he was in big trouble until the very eve of the November 1994 election. Barack Obama knows now, barely a year into his presidency. While the party loyalists can blame Martha Coakley’s defeat on her ignorance of Red Sox baseball, it was clearly a message to the president and his party. Yes, a less inept candidate might have beaten Scott Brown, but if Obama and his program had been more popular in Massachusetts, even Coakley could have won--and by ten points or more.

The victory of Scott Brown in the fight for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat shines a light on a trend in American politics that ought to deeply trouble progressives.

Jonathan Cohn has a very thoughtful, polite, persuasive open letter directed to those House Democrats who are considering letting health care reform die. I have decided to express my thoughts in a statement of my own:

Dear Jon,

Thanks for the shout out (for my Atlantic piece) on your blog, which I just read. Given that it was so positive in tone about my article overall, I hate to complain. But given that you focused disproportionately on one small statement, which you called “bizarre,” I did want to explain myself.

I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of this bill as well as you, Jonathan Cohn and Paul Starr, all of whose opinions I rely on. In fact, even before seeing your post, I had an exchange with Starr that made me think twice about my wording in the Atlantic piece. So I do believe it will be more significant than Kennedy-Kassebaum, and you all have persuaded me that in my Atlantic piece I understate what the bill (if it’s passed) will achieve.

Here’s what I was thinking. First, that was a small piece of my article, and while I’m responsible for what I wrote, I didn’t imagine so much would be made of it.

The Wall Street Journal runs through the options. It suggests hurrying through a new vote in both houses will be difficult:

One liberal Democrat, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.), said many lawmakers have decided that, if she loses, the party would have no choice but to cram a plan through as quickly as possible, while working to delay Mr. Brown's arrival to the Senate.

Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and a Special Correspondent for The Treatment.

I'll be on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross today, talking about--surprise!--health care reform.

Follow Jonathan Cohn on Twitter: @jcohntnr

Just before the new year, The Washington Post published the first piece to come out of its partnership with the “new independent digital news publication” The Fiscal Times (TFT). By 7 a.m.