WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats, chastened by Republican Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts, have admitted that they have learned a valuable lesson after seeing their advantage in the senate drop to a paltry 59-41. The lesson? Stop trying to do things.

“This is a wake-up call,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “It’s time to slam on the brakes and stop everything. The people have spoken.”

It must be difficult for the GOP these days. On one hand, they want to continue to appeal to Bible-thumping, teabagging, gun-toting bigots, but on the other, they also want to extend their congregation beyond the high school drop-outs and the plantation owners. This level of re-branding is hard enough to do without the family of one of their most recognizable Senators breaking ranks with the party on one of their core issues.

Yesterday's Massachusetts' election affects me personally. I'm self-employed and have a cheap health plan. Within the first few months of beginning a new plan, I'm already involved in a dispute with the provider, Golden Rule, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare. My health plan, I recently discovered, doesn't cover preventive care in the first three months. I don't know why they have this restriction. It would not be a big deal except that no one told me about it, not when I signed up and not when I called to confirm that my physician was in network.

While Democrats are fretting about what to do about health care reform following Scott Brown's Senate victory in Massachusetts, many have brought up the idea that they should use the legislative process known as Reconciliation to pass a reform bill.

The mainstream media, always happy to run with a meme, have decided that Reconciliation is an obscure, sneaky process: