Inevitable: Liberals already forgiving Dems who voted no on O-Care

As unhappy as they are about Space’s health care vote—and as distasteful as they found it—many local labor officials, party leaders and activists say the alternative is far worse. They recognize that their neighbors in the southeastern Ohio-based district Space represents tend to be conservative-minded, and are well-aware that a Republican represented the district for 12 long years until stepping down amid scandal in 2006.

It’s a familiar sentiment in the 34 House districts currently inhabited by Democrats like Space who bucked the party on the historic health care vote, with the initial rage and promises of ballot box retaliation giving way to a more measured calculus that accounts for the hard local political realities in many of those seats…

Across town at the county unemployment office, Jerri Goodlin, a self-described liberal who lost her job as a manager at a temporary services company in January, was another constituent whose anger has dissipated…

“I’m thinking, ‘You dumb ass!’” she said, describing her initial reaction to Space’s switch. “But we don’t see everything so I don’t know…Everybody’s entitled to a mistake now and then. So far I haven’t seen anything different that would make me not support him.”