How distorted is our political process?

Ezra writing today about how the health care reform legislative process may look going forward,

...you don't need a broad bipartisan coalition. You only need a small bipartisan coalition. Or, if you could achieve full Democratic unity, no bipartisan coalition at all. The point of the bill is passing it, not passing it pretty. That, at the end of the day, is why the administration insisted on including the reconciliation process. Ramming the bill through with 50 votes isn't the most elegant way to pass health care reform.

I'm not disagreeing with Ezra's assessment here at all. I think he's spot on about the lay of the land going forward and I think Obama did the right thing by keeping budget reconciliation on the table.

But let's take a step back and think about this for a minute. Barack Obama won in a landslide, he campaigned vigorously on health care reform. His Congressional allies also campaigned on health care reform and they expanded their majorities in the House and Senate to levels not seen in a generation or more. A solid majority of the American public is behind the Democratic Party, the Obama administration and comprehensive health care reform. And yet we're concerned about passing comprehensive health care reform with "only" a majority of support from the Senate and not a super-majority.

Somewhere in the last few decades we've let our policy making process become absolutely perverted.