Is it possible that Dem politicians are in for an August of furious town hall feedback so brutal that it all becomes absurd and breeds a grim, amused fatalism that actually steels them to proceed on health care? Just asking. . . . If you’re going to die, might as well die having enacted universal health care. . . . Remember how Tom DeLay and the GOP reacted to their drubbing at the polls in 1998 on the impeachment issue? (They went ahead and impeached.)

The good news for those who oppose the health-care legislation put forth by congressional Democrats is that they’ve had a real impact on public opinion: According to Gallup, support for the bill is down 21 percent in a little over three weeks. The bad news is that all of the public anger seen at the town halls may prove ultimately irrelevant to the odds of passage.

If you asked House Democrats what they most wanted to leave as their legacy in public office, it’s a good bet that a healthy number would offer a variation of “a government-managed health-care plan that is available to every American citizen.” Some would classify it as “single payer,” others would want the “public option,” but they all add up to a massive new entitlement, in which Americans depend upon the federal government for their health care. Conservatives have dreaded it; looking around the globe, they know that once created, these programs are just about politically impossible to repeal.

Many congressional Democrats, told that passage of the sweeping health-care legislation will cost them their seats, may find the choice a harder decision than many observers think. Yes, no one should doubt a politician’s instinct for self-preservation. But it’s quite possible that long-serving Democrats might want to enact a sweeping social change instead of taking the safe route.

The average age of a member of Congress this year is 58.2 years, about a year and half older than the last Congress and among the highest of any Congress in recent history. The average House member is 57 years old and has served an average of 11 years; the average senator is 63.1 years old and has served 12.2 years. For those who find the current annual salary of $174,000 too modest, life after office offers many lucrative opportunities in lobbying, teaching, talking-head punditry, consulting, and book deals.

Even if a member of Congress found the power and status tough to relinquish, a politically risky vote might still be worth the risk. A House seat lost in 2010 can be won back in some other cycle. Among the Democratic senators, only 18 are up in 2010.

Democratic opportunities to achieve long-desired legislative goals are much rarer. With the early political outlook for 2010 favoring Republicans, and a corresponding slow, steady decline in Obama’s numbers, Democrats will probably never get a better chance to enact agenda items than now.

The alternative — for no bill to be passed, or for a House with more than 250 Democrats and a Senate with 60 to pass watered-down, innocuous legislation — might be much more devastating to Democrats as a whole. It would be the ultimate illustration of their powerlessness, and probably provoke a furious backlash from the party’s own grassroots, driven by an intense sense of betrayal. MSNBC host Ed Schultz is already referring to Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska as a “weed”; Ned Lamont–style challenges to Blue Dogs would be a near-certainty in future cycles. The infighting and finger-pointing would be furious, while the conservative grassroots would exult in triumph at their ability to hinder President Obama’s most important domestic initiative from a political position that was widely perceived to be irrelevance.