Erick cries It's a trap! while Josh finds himself shocked to admit that Erick, of all people!, understands this--this being, in part, that Republicans are "endorsing the bizarre idea that health reform should not lead to health plan changes"--just as Mike in the lower chamber is enchanted with the idea of supporting what he himself labels a terrible bill, but for heaven's sake he needs something "to vote for," no matter how dumb, "in order to keep our word to the American people," however Mary says Mike's terribleness will "gut" Obamacare, while her bill, which she insists is meant not to undermine but to strengthen Obamacare, would in reality more egregiously undermine it, which Jay, for utterly incomprehensible reasons, says "shares a similar goal to what the president has asked his team to explore"; meanwhile Ezra draws a long syringe of Ativan.
Thus our political epic crawls to an uncertain close, more Swiftian or Waugh-like than Homeric, with a touch of Wilde: To lose one house may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
The supremest irony? Charles Krauthammer may actually have been right about something after all, though of course not, like Erick Erickson, for the reasons he imagined.