Ben Smith writes that if the health care bill passes with “unified, if grumbly, support on the left, it would seem to vindicate the White House’s fundamental approach, which was to take the left for granted as much as possible and focus on courting marginal members of the Senate.”

He’s absolutely right. As I told Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal the other day (which he didn’t print), “f#%king r$%ards” worked.

As I told Rick Klein and David Chalian on TopLine yesterday, if you don’t think the endangered Freshmen and Sophomores in the House are driving the car right now, think again. Remember that magic number of 39 Democratic votes needed to join with the Republican for a majority? Well, that’s how many Freshmen and Sophomores were willing to ban together in the “oust Rangel” effort — rather than have the issue hung around their necks as a millstone in 2010:

Joe Crowley, an ally of Rangel who has also played a leadership role at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is leading the whip count efforts on Rangel, acting as a go-between between the vulnerable freshman and sophomore Democrats, on the one hand, and Rangel and Democratic leadership on the other.

They were willing to buck leadership to oust the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to keep their seats.

Think about that.

I don’t know who thought that penalizing people 2% of their income if they refuse to buy the product of private insurance companies was a good idea. Maybe the same guy who thought NAFTA would be a winner for the Democrats in 1994.