Yes, they can

Well, they did it.
I didn't think the Democrats in Congress would actually do it, and it was a lot closer than I thought it should be, but they passed health insurance reform tonight.
I just hope the progressives learned something when they saw how close that vote actually was. Without the pander to the anti-abortion crowd, it wouldn't have passed.
And in spite of all the negativity on the progressive blogs about how inadequate this reform was, they missed the point -- exactly what this bill did was never that important, as Canada has discovered -- its just going to be argued about and changed over and over anyway. The important thing was the acceptance of two basic concepts: that the government has the right to tell insurance companies and health care providers what to do, and that everybody must be covered by health insurance including the poor (ie, black) people.
This whole experience will toughen the Democrats immeasurably -- they have been called names and screamed at by idiots, and survived -- there's nothing like shared experience in the trenches to make people realise they must either hang together or they will hang separately.