Pelosi Wins the Day

Nancy Pelosi clapped her hands as she left the House floor late Saturday night.

“That was easy,” the speaker said with a smile.

It wasn’t. She had just delivered a promise decades of her predecessors failed to bring home, harnessing her uncommon focus, vote-counting acumen and consensus-building skills to bring tens of millions of Americans a giant leap closer to having health insurance coverage with a 220-215 roll call.

“Somebody asked me if this was a victory for [President] Barack Obama. It’s not. This victory belongs to her,” said House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.). “As far as I know she never sleeps nor eats.”

The bill’s fate, for now, rests across the Capitol in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). But with Saturday’s vote, Pelosi proved yet again she is the able master of a Democratic Caucus that is enjoying its greatest political and legislative success since at least the beginning of the Clinton administration and arguably since its legislative heyday in the mid-1960s.