They cynical armchair experts, I'll just let them be

President Obama today will achieve passing the most significant piece of legislation since the Civil Rights Act. That's perhaps a bit hyperbole. Certainly, the Clean Water Act and other legislation deserve a prominent place among the important laws of the past 50 years. But, nothing since the Civil Rights Act has required the investment of political and social capital, and faced such a rabid, dishonest and morally bankrupt opposition - despite conservative claims to be grounded in moral principle, and culminating in a no-bones-about-it racist and homophobic outburst of the kind of vitriol that barely hides under the surface of almost all GOP (and make no mistake about it, the tea partiers are the heart and soul of the GOP) populism - than health care reform.

I cannot say that I was a huge proponent of doing this, now. Health care reform - or rather health insurance reform or, as I branded it last year, "health security" - was a key and fundamental and essential policy goal - but I worried about the timing. I hashed out my concerns and my internal debate on these pages. Still remembering the Clinton initiative, I believed that health care reform was a land mine, and that Obama's political skills would be best initially served by focusing on closing Guantanamo, on ending Don't Ask Don't Tell and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, of moving the U.S. away from the use of fossil fuels.

I feared that a bruising battle over heath care - insurance - reform would doom his ability to do those other things, and more. Better, perhaps, to make HCR a second term issue.

Yet here's the thing. Political capital is meant to be spent. Elections are not won to simply decide how to win the next one. Majorities exist to be used. And if you pass on the opportunity to make fundamental and lasting change when the opportunity presents, the time may never come again. Nothing is guaranteed.

President Obama understands this, and America will have to as well.

Moreover, President Obama is also making progress on those other initiatives. We may hear ongoing "Progressive" complaints about the speed and effectiveness of those initiatives, but look - progress is hard, especially in this toxic environment. It requires a lot of hard work, but also a lot of care, to make sure not only that it is done right, but that it gets done at all. It requires patience and persistence, and patience and persistence are the hallmarks of this President.

Expect a very busy seven months until the mid-term elections. But also expect to be patient on each of the the issues. The issues that confront America are not simple ones that yield easy answers. And this is not a President who rushes into action in order to be shot down on the front lines.

Today is an historic day, and this is an historic President, and not for where he came from. Everyone who voted for Barack Obama should be proud of their President and of themselves. From his careful, deliberate, patient posture to his respectful courting of those concerned about abortion restrictions (Bart Stupak) to the my-way-or-no-way so-called Progressives (Dennis Kucinich), he has achieved something that, despite the unrealistic fantasies of much of the left upon his election, was by no means ever certain and which has never been achieved. It's another first for Obama, but more than that, it's a first that really matters, that isn't just symbolic.

And he didn't do it alone. I want to be careful and not overlook something - someone - very important here, who was President Obama's equal and partner in this process, so let me make this point. Despite the misogynistic hatred of Nancy Pelosi that pervades our discourse, Pelosi is proving to be one of the great Speakers of the House. She deserves immense credit for getting this done, and done smartly. From the perspective of policy and process, she has been everything for which the Democrats could have been hoped.

This is the time we've been waiting for.

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias, this morning: "Nancy Pelosi is perhaps the greatest progressive Speaker of the House that we’ve ever had."