Bipartisan health care plan

This is what happens when you try to muscle through in six months — and in secret — what you could have done over seven years. You bear the brunt of the responsibility for the GOP’s disaster of a healthcare plan getting flushed down the tubes.

This is what happens when you do anything, short of crawling under a rock, to avoid having to look your scared and angry constituents in the eye at town hall meetings.

When you emerge from wherever you’ve been hiding, those constituents are still scared, still angry, having flooded your offices on the Hill with phone calls and emails to make sure you get the message.

This is what happens when one of your own gets seriously sick, then gets the treatment he needs — stat! — because he has insurance that he and his Senate colleagues refuse to give up because they sure don’t want the misbegotten healthcare with which they want to saddle the rest of us. Americans wish John McCain well, but are resentful.

This is what happens when you close the door on Senate colleagues who are women.