"CNN) -- Democratic members of Congress, party strategists, and even President Obama have tried their best to portray Republicans as obstructionists to health care reform, and want us to believe that if the effort fails, it's all because of the GOP.
That's bull. The failure to pass health care reform would be a yoke around the Democrats' neck, and the cause of losing the moment would be their inability to achieve unity among themselves.
Democrats have the perfect political hat trick. They control the White House, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, with a strong majority in both houses.
But I'm reminded of something Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, told me nine years ago: Democrats know nothing about party unity.
Conyers was being interviewed for an election special I was working on for a now-defunct black cable network, and he said that if Democrats had a majority of the votes in the House, they had a unified group of only about 165.
That's because when you throw in the 50-something Blue Dog Democrats -- strongly conservative members whom some party loyalists liken to Republicans in Democrat clothing -- then you have a different kind of dynamic than you do in the GOP, where the strong base of conservatives typically stays in line.
Then, of course, you have the far-left members, loud and noisy, and oftentimes unwilling to compromise their positions in order to move legislation forward.
When you put the far left and the far right of the Democratic Party in one room, you will see fireworks that rival a Democratic-Republican fight.
And that's exactly what we are seeing on health care reform."