Democrats are writing a new narrative, on health care and the elections

Since early last summer — when tea party protests erupted around the U.S. — Democrats have been on the defensive.

Despite sweeping majorities in both houses of Congress and a still-popular Democratic President in the White House, they seemed divided, nervous, and rudderless.

The low point came when maverick Republican Scott Brown won the Senate seat held only a few months earlier by liberal icon Ted Kennedy.

But as we muddle toward spring, it is the Democrats who appear poised to pass a massive health care overhaul.

It includes provisions for covering and protecting Americans that presidents have been striving to achieve since Republican Teddy Roosevelt was President.

The do-nothings will have done something huge, even historic.

In the short term, almost as important as the bill itself is the attitude shown by Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

Lampooned as ineffectual a few weeks ago, this unlikely trio simply kept marching.

Pundits call the bill dead? Fine, keep working to tweak its language. Republicans call it socialism? Fine, keep rallying support from centrist Dems.

“We will go through the gate,” House Speaker Pelosi declared in January. “If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in.”

Waverers — including North Country Dems Bill Owens and Scott Murphy — were reassured by the fact that the legislation itself turned out to be a reasonably credible reform package.

The independent Congressional Budget Office determined last week that it would bring insurance coverage to 32 million additional Americans, while cutting the Federal budget deficit modestly.

It will also rein in some of the most egregious health insurance industry practices.

Republicans, of course, have been insisting that the Democrats are handing them a big stick.

Many conservatives are livid about a bill that they see as unnecessarily intrusive and impossibly expensive.

Another entitlement won’t fly, they say, at a time when the U.S. can’t pay its current bills.

That message will clearly energize the GOP’s tea party base. But I’m not convinced that opposition to health care reform will jazz most rank-and-file voters.

Too many people are nervous about their own health care, or have someone in their family living without coverage.

And polls generally show Americans to be just about evenly split on the reform measure, just as we are evenly divided on just about everything else.

My guess is that by mid-summer, we’ll all be thinking about the economy, and jobs, not the arcane parliamentary maneuvering used to push through this bill.

Just as troubling for Republicans is evidence that Democrats have some spine, and leadership that can rally the troops around big fights.

There is one more wrinkle here. Oftentimes, politics are won by passion as much as broad public opinion.

If a solid core of conservatives are enraged and energized by this measure, it could boost the GOP significantly in the fall.

But Republicans are still struggling to channel and contain the excesses of its own tea party fringe.

As Democrats prepared to trumpet a big victory, some right-wing activists in Washington DC were spitting on lawmakers, using racial epithets, and hectoring one Democratic lawmaker as a “faggot.”

I’m not suggesting that this is the norm for conservatives — it clearly is not. But it’s also not the kind of behavior that wins elections.

Republicans have half a year to argue, clearly and forcefully, that they offer better, more rational and effective solutions to America’s problems.

With the Democrats’ passage of health care reform, the GOP’s job may become harder, not easier.