Yesterday TPM ran a story talking about how Tuesday’s election made healthcare reform just a “bit easier”. Here is the basic overview of that reasoning:

The NY-23 seat abdicated by Republican John McHugh (who resigned to become Secretary of the Army) went to Democrat Bill Owens–the first Democrat to hold the seat in over a century. And the CA-10 seat abdicated by Democrat Ellen Tauscher (who resigned to become Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs) went to Democrat John Garamendi.

That creates some simple arithmetic. Yesterday, Democrats had 256 voting members in the House. By week’s end, they’ll have 258. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could afford to lose no more than 38 Democratic votes on a landmark health care reform bill. Next week, after Owens and Garamendi are sworn in, she can lose up to 40. For legislation this historic and far-reaching, she’ll need every vote she can get–and both seem likely to support reform

Sadly this little celebratory post may have been premature. Democrats have never been good at reading the tea leafs, and that is becoming more evident as election 2009 fades further into history:

Democrats on Capitol Hill began a nervous debate Wednesday about the course President Obama has set for their party, with some questioning whether they should emphasize job creation over some of the more ambitious items on the president’s agenda.

The conversations came as White House officials insisted that the party’s gubernatorial defeats in Virginia and New Jersey had few implications for Obama’s standing or for Democratic prospects in the 2010 midterm elections.

But moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday’s voting, warning that the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama’s far-reaching proposals and mounting spending, as well as the growing federal debt. Liberal lawmakers, meanwhile, said the party’s shortcoming came in moving too slowly on health-care reform and other items that would satisfy a base becoming disenchanted with the failure to deliver rapid change in government.

As I posted yesterday the biggest failure of Creigh Deeds is that he ran against the Obama/Democratic agenda. This was an instant turnoff to the base that came out in overwhelming numbers last year and helped elect President Obama. It’s not that Obama wasn’t on the ballot –it’s that his agenda wasn’t.

Another failure has come in the way that Democrats have gone after healthcare reform. This country looses out on a lot of business because they have to fork out so much to insure employees. A perfect example is when Toyota decided to build a new plant in Ontario last year instead of their first choice of the United States. The big reason:

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

“Most people don’t think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage,” he said.

So we miss out on bringing business in because of the higher cost per employee companies have to face here.

This is where the Democrats have failed miserably on healthcare, and why they should have started with pushing universal coverage. Simply put, it plays into the possibility of creating far more jobs in the U.S.

Now we are stuck with spineless Democrats who are reading Tuesday’s results totally wrong and now could end up with no reform at all. It’s time for Democrats to stand on principal instead of listening to spin. It’s time for them to deliver on what they promised us last year.