Steve Benen is a friend of mine, so my re-broadcasting this shout-out may not mean very much. But I don’t know that he’s a friend of Andrew Sabl‘s. And he’s the guy who wrote it.

Success has many parents (of both sexes), and in this case needed more than one Godfather. I won’t dissent from Jonathan Chait’s praise of the President, John Judis’ kudos to pressure from grassroots Democrats, or—especially, since it flatters my Whiggish sympathies and corrects for the presidentialist bias of the press—Steve Benen’s and Mike’s emphasis on Speaker Pelosi as the colossus who bestrode the whole process.

But I’d like to single out one person who deserves more praise than he’s going to claim or is likely to get: Steve Benen himself. (emphasis mine) After Scott Brown won, Democrats’ first reaction was panic. The analogy most often drawn, though it in retrospect seems deranged to compare the loss of a Senate super-majority to the loss of both Houses, was to Clinton’s situation, and his reaction, after the Republican victories of 1994. Steve stepped in on January 20—just a day after Coakley’s loss, a full week before the State of the Union—with an alternative: “pass the damn bill,” and then amend it via reconciliation. I believe he invented the slogan, though Kevin Drum picked it up a few hours later. I know that he flogged it, immediately, relentlessly and repeatedly, through good news and bad: see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It became proverbial. It became the popular title—and, thanks to alert fans, the easy-to-remember URL—of Steve’s pithy, powerful strategy memo making the case for moving forward. It cemented Democratic opinion around the idea that failure was not an option—and, more important, that incremental reform counted as failure.
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Benen’s conceptual leadership wasn’t sufficient by itself. But it was necessary. No Benen, no bill. Thanks, Steve. A lot of sick people owe their future lives to you.

Do me a favor, and click on the link, and read the whole thing.

I suspect that many other people are going to agree with Andrew Sabl’s assessment of Steve’s role. Perhaps the second half of “who deserves more praise than he’s going to claim or is likely to get” will turn out to be that thing of beauty, a self-exploding prophecy?