They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

Several recent polls, conducted after the House vote Sunday night, show that public support for Obama's efforts on reform have jumped, and that he has re-endeared himself to his Democratic base.

A USA Today/Gallup poll released yesterday showed that the public thought that Obama did the best job when it came health care reform. Forty-six percent of respondents to the poll said he did an "excellent or good job" on reform over the past year. That was significantly higher than either the Democrats in Congress (32% said they did an excellent/good job) or the GOP on Capitol Hill (26%).

All these things combined create an atmosphere that is very favorable to Democrats.  Put in simplistic terms, Americans like gutsy moves.  They like people who stand up for their principles.  They like winners.

And, frankly, they like the individual components of this health care reform package.  As time passes, they will come to like it more and more, and they will come to see, more and more, that the heated rhetoric comes nowhere near to fitting the reality, at which time the Republicans will look worse and worse, especially as they move closer and closer to embracing their Tea Party lunatic fringe and further and further away from the moderate (read: sane) center.

So, how do we make the Honeymoon of last week last?

First of all, the Bridegroom himself is key, as was pointed out so beautifully in the British-run publication, the Financial Times, in a piece by Edward Luce, "America: The Recovery Position."

He pointed out that, to foreign governments, Obama already looks more powerful, just by achieving this difficult victory here at home.  In fact, in other articles as well, it's been pointed out that Russian president Medvedev thought for a while there that he could push Obama around on the arms control treaty they were negotiating, and tested his boundaries with the new American president--and found to his surprise that that was not the case.  It is perhaps no surprise to foreign observers that the final deal was struck after Obama signed the health care reform bill in the United States.

To his own party, as well, Obama seemed to reach his stride in this battle, after seeming to drift for some months.  Some thought he left too much to congress and the senate, some thought he tried too hard for bipartisanship.  Some thought he needed the wake-up call of the Scott Brown takeover of Senator Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts.  Whatever the catalyst, the man came out fighting, and cannot be faulted for either his tireless efforts behind the scenes (Robert Gibbs says he personally phoned 94 senators or congresspeople), or his crisscrossing stemwinding speeches to the country, or his smackdown to Republicans on-camera and in their faces.

But there's another way to look at this.

In another piece for Financial Times (subscription necessary, but free), "Obama Throws Out the Political Rules," by Clive Cook, he points out that since the Republicans won the PR battle through fear, misinformation, and hate-mongering (okay, I added that last part; he just said they won the PR part), then the health care reform package was politically unpopular at the time it was passed:

A year ago there were two scenarios for healthcare reform. One was that the Democrats would carry a willing public with them and pass a comprehensive bill. Another was that opinion would cool, forcing the Democrats to settle for less. What happened was extraordinarily unlikely: the public turned against the Democrats’ proposal and the party went ahead and did it anyway.

In Europe, rule by a political class that tells voters what is good for them is an idea so familiar that it is quite taken for granted. In the United States it is novel, and not instantly welcome.

Between now and November, Democrats must persuade the country that they acted in its best interests when they overrode the public’s doubts. If they succeed and retain their majorities in Congress they will have a green light to advance their wider aims, which include tax reform, labour relations, energy and industrial policies. They will conclude that Clintonism, with its submission to centrist opinion, was an error: they will have learned that they can capture and move centrist opinion. But if voters punish their arrogance, their momentum will be stopped. US policy will be set on a very different course.

He goes on to say that the vile rhetoric of the Republicans is a mistake, because centrist Independents don't like it, and that furthermore, all this talk about repeal merely sounds like so much whining unless they've got a solid health care reform package of their own to replace it with--and we all know they don't.

However--and this would come second to the Bridegroom (call it the work-part of marriage)--he says that Dems need to take care and not get too carried away with the celebrations. 

We've still got to implement this thing, and as Jonathan Cohn points out, that is going to be the hard part.

If we can start getting the putting-into-place right, we WILL start looking like geniuses.

And we have to not just "deliver the deliverables, as Cohn puts it, but we have to EDUCATE THE PUBLIC that the deliverables are out there to be delivered.  Some benefits drop into place in three months, some in six.  Some right away.  Some not for four years.  As Democrats, we need to educate ourselves to these basics and make sure our family and friends--especially those opposed to this plan--know what they are.

They might find themselves less opposed than they thought.

For instance, I was able to send this article to everybody in my family who has served or knows anyone who has, from Stars and Stripes, (completely trusted source to conservatives) that reassures active-duty military and veterans that their health care benefits will not be affected by the health care reform bill.

My brother, a conservative Republican and evangelical Christian who teaches at a private Christian school and who is a retired Chief Warrant Officer from the army, wrote to thank me.

There are other reasons Democrats have to be optimistic in 2010.

As Dylan Loewe writes, it's not just that the GOP is self-destructing, it is that there are things working in our favor. 

Even so, right now, there are some things over which nobody--not even Barack Obama--has any control.

The economy.  Jobs.

However, new job loss hemorrhaging seems to have stopped.  It has not yet turned around, but it has stopped.  There are signs of recovery in the economy but they are small and most people don't feel them yet in their pocketbooks.  People are still frightened and the Republicans smell that blood in the water and love nothing better than to throw red meat in and call the sharks to heighten the fear level to panic.

The ugly anger of the Tea Partiers is the flip-side of that panic, since many of the Tea Partiers themselves have been laid off and--irony of ironies--draw unemployment, social security, or veteran's benefits while they go to the protests and scream about government programs and demand lower taxes and FEWER government programs; and that health insurance reform (designed to help just those people who ARE laid off) be "killed"--is egged on and fueled by the GOP rhetoric in hopes of drawing their money and votes.

But as Loewe points out in his piece, the unintended consequences of this may be the "Ross Perot effect"--Tea Partiers drawing votes to the rightest-right-winger and away from the regular Republican candidate, thus throwing the election to the Democratic opponent.