"Nothing about losing an election forces you to bend to the will of the guy who won—just ask the Republicans who lost in 2006, then lost in 2008, then opposed everything Obama proposed, and are now thrilled to have 41 votes in the Senate. The option of responding to this setback with determination exists. There’s no rule preventing the House from passing the Senate health care bill. For that matter, there’s no rule preventing the reconciliation process from being used to implement a carbon tax with the revenue split between rebates, investments in clean energy, and deficit reduction. That’s not going to happen, but the reason it’s not going to happen is that Democratic members of congress don’t want to do it. They could go down in history as the people who took bold action to solve that problem, but they prefer not to."
— Matthew Yglesias, January 19, 2010
