Could the Senate be on the Cusp of Blowing Another Health Care Deadline?

I was waiting on tender hooks.

Oh, c'mon Stuart! She was close...for all intensive purposes.

Thanks so much for the correction, Jay Newton-Small.
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Lest you I think I went a little overboard posting the definition of the term, I just thought it was neat...

Jay, I did read the Washington Post link. The headline and the body of the story refer to her as a centrist. If you had read Stuart's oeuvre, you would know that he has been at pains to define centrists for all of us. Centrist does not equate to moderate.
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Lincoln might want to check the latest polls in Delaware. The very popular Mike Castle has dropped because of his lack of support for health care reform.

Actually, JNS, I'd appreciate it if you would define what YOU mean by "moderate." Since you also referred to Lincoln as a swing vote, I don't see what using the label "moderate" does other than cloak her position with an aura of reasonableness.
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If you personally believe that Lincoln's position is reasonable and want to express that opinion on the blog, I have no problem with that. What I do object to is the use of loaded terms that appear to be objective, but mask a subjective opinion of a journalist.
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What I find annoying is that this subject has only been brought up about 10,000 times before. If journalists insist on using terms like "moderate" despite unrelenting criticism of the practice, I would hope they could defend their writing better than telling readers to just "go read WaPo."

I also came here to lodge a complaint against "moderate". Moderate against what? As the GOP swings further and further to the right, a position "in the middle" also by necessity becomes further to the right.
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If somebody says don't torture, the other says cut off their arms and legs, a "moderate" becomes somebody who says just one arm and one leg would be good enough.
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Moderate has no meaning. Yet in journo speak it often means "extra serious". It doesn't. We need a political lexicon that we are all working from here. In right wing speak, Obama is a socialist, communist, fascist, buddhist, muslim, saggitarius,vegetarian. On most of the planet, he would be considered at home on the moderate wing of the conservative party.
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Moderation is always considered a prudent thing. When we call corporate shills "moderates", it reflects a value judgment that I find highly biased.

Jay Newton-Small:
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Thank you very much for responding to commentary; it is greatly appreciated.
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Here's what I've found in the WaPo piece:

...the outcome is almost certain to rest on decisions made by a handful of moderate Democrats.
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...the trio of Democratic centrists could make or break the reform effort.
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The low-profile centrist is being pressed by both sides.
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...said Sen. Mark Pryor (D), Arkansas's junior senator, who coasted to reelection last year[,] "You're going to have detractors on either side, no matter what you do."
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Lincoln's record on a government insurance plan has drawn detractors on both sides.

That WaPo piece is heavily biased toward the centrist political view, literally parroting Pryor's centrist language, and implying that his "coasting" election in Obama's landslide 2008 had all to do with that centrism and not Democratic fortunes generally --a debatable proposition at best.
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As your colleague at Time James Poniewozik has artfully and accurately pointed out (link to his excellent piece):

As anyone following health reform knows, centrism is a political position too. And you see moderate bias — i.e., a preference for centrism — whenever a news outlet assumes that the truth must be "somewhere in the middle."
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Often, moderate bias is just the result of caution, but the effect is to bolster centrist political positions — not least by implying that they are not political positions at all but occupy a happy medium between the nutjobs. Meanwhile, conservatives see moderate bias as liberal, and liberals see it as conservative — letting journalists conclude that it's not bias at all.

When those of you in the press corps use the term "moderate", you really mean to say "committed to the centrist position." Centrists, just like leftists or rightists, can be radical or moderate in their political views.
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I'm sure you are aware that Blanche Lincoln is a founding member of the ideologically centrist wing of the Democratic party, the Senate New Democrat Coalition (link to New Democrats), an offshoot of the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC, as I'm sure you wouldn't contest, is the pro-business, anti-liberal, right-wing accommodating, moneyed establishment of the Democratic Party.
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As many have pointed out before me, the public option (whatever its policy merits) polls well amongst Blanche Lincoln's constituents (link to Josh Marshall's TPM), when polling questions omit pejorative phrasing like "government-run health care" (which you know isn't on the table at all):

The poll asked Arkansans "Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?"
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The findings are in line with other statewide and national polls that find the public option to be broadly popular. 56 favor, 37 oppose.
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Lincoln's approval numbers still suffer, but the poll also suggests she won't be doing herself any favors if she opposes health care reform on the grounds that the legislation includes a public option.

Perhaps centrism's proponents --notably Blanche Lincoln-- simply aren't comfortable with what is arguably a political winner, because of the supremely pro-business, ideologically bi-partisan platform of the DLC.
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If this possibility hasn't entered into your calculations, Jay Newton-Small, and you are taking the "pragmatism" argument as a matter of Beltway Conventional Wisdom faith, perhaps you are, let us say, unaware of your own professional biases and your own "preference for centrism".
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Have you ever considered that your work might suffer from centrist bias, Jay Newton-Small?
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...Not that there is a problem with biases, mind you --we all have them-- but the issue is with hidden, undeclared (or in your case perhaps unknown) biases.
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I'm asking you "Moderate what?" so that you may become aware that you implicitly assign the "extreme" position to left and right proponents by habitually omitting the politics to which the word "moderate" applies. Russ Feingold isn't an extreme liberal, he's a liberal. John McCain isn't an extreme conservative, he's a conservative. Joe Lieberman, on the other hand, is an extreme centrist. “Moderate” and “centrist” are not synonymous terms.
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A politician who always takes the middle position no matter the situation, who reliably seeks elite bipartisan cooperation at the expense of both the left's and right's popular agendas, who works to preserve the status quo, and who perpetually defies voting constituents in favor of corporate sponsors is a dedicated centrist, not a "moderate" anything. I'm asking you to please be accurate in your descriptions, Jay Newton-Small, and label New Democrats what they are, not what they proclaim themselves to be.
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Thanks once again for responding to commentary, Jay Newton-Small, and thank you for reading and making the intellectual effort to consider this notion.

I'm sure you are aware that Blanche Lincoln is a founding member of the ideologically centrist wing of the Democratic party, the Senate New Democrat Coalition
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You realize, of course, that JNS once claimed that John McCain was a "virtual liberal":
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/10/08/mccain-maverick-no-more/
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which caused me to theorize that she doesn't actually understand why a person could be called liberal, or conservative, or, in this case, a moderate.

Oh yes, It'll be butterflies, lolliepops, and fluffy white clouds from now on.

Yes. And there will be a binding climate deal in Copenhagen in December... since the U.S. Congress is holding the entire world hostage on that one.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1929071_1929070_1939676,00.html

And Time will introduce friendly urls.