HR3 – “The No Taxpayer Money for Abortion Act” – is a vile piece of legislation by its title alone. That the bill contained, until yesterday, a provision to redefine rape as “forcible” rape was even more insidious. In a Republican-controlled House, it’s not shocking to see this kind of medieval treatment of women become a priority over, you know, job creation. But let’s focus on the Democrats involved in this travesty. A look at the DCCC’s contributions to and on behalf of the 10 Democratic co-sponsors of HR3 show the committee spent a whopping $3,379,322.85 to keep these members in office – in 2010 alone.

Because Republicans have only a passing familiarity with reality, today they’ll begin to embark upon replacing health care with their own “free-market solutions.” Hysterically, they’re not even sure when the relevant committees will get around to it.

While there is no doubt the GOP will make big gains on election night, the plausible range of pickups is incredibly wide. Depending on if the national mood breaks one way or another, dozens of seats could be won or lost by very narrow margins.

With that in mind, here are 98 hotly contested races that Firedoglake will be watching closely over the next 10 days. . . and in the case of a few of them, maybe even longer than that.

“Fiscal responsibility” is the last thing the Blue Dogs are interested in. Their prescription drug and Medicare positions alone add $148 billion to the cost of the bill without adding any value, and their insistence on “paygo” means those cost gets passed on directly to consumers in the form of higher premiums.

I highly recommend read this new Reuters story on how useless Conrad’s idea of small statewide co-ops would be. The story quotes several experts who all agree with what most of the progressive community has been saying for months. The co-ops would be so legally restricted by Baucus’s bill that they would have little to no impact on health insurance in this country.