Still struggling to line up the 60 votes that are needed to overcome a potential filibuster of health care reform, Senate majority leader Harry Reid sent a strong signal on Tuesday that President Obama is unlikely to be signing his top domestic priority into law this year, as Democrats had hoped. "We're not going to be bound by timelines," Reid told reporters as he emerged from a weekly lunch with Democratic Senators. He vowed to pass a bill "as expeditiously as we can," which is another way of saying it will probably be slow going over the weeks to come.

Reid's comments were such a departure from the official line that, as soon as reports of them began appearing, his office issued a statement attempting to take the edge off of them. "Our goals remain unchanged. We want to get health insurance reform done this year, and we have unprecedented momentum to achieve that," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "There is no reason why we can't have a transparent and thorough debate in the Senate and still send a bill to the President by Christmas."

No reason, that is, except for the fact that it is already November.

All year, Democratic strategists on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have made no secret of the fact that they do not view time as their friend on enacting health reform, a goal that has eluded every President since Harry Truman who has attempted it. At one point, Democrats hoped to have the bill passed by both houses over the summer and on Obama's desk in the fall. Instead, the August recess was dominated by cable-television images of near riots at congressional town-hall meetings, and it took a dramatic, game-changing presidential address to a joint session of Congress to get health reform back on track.