Just when you think Democrats are a risk-averse bunch of, ah, goldfish, they do something I admire:

The chairmen of the Senate and House education committees said on Thursday that they would fight to attach President Obama’s proposed overhaul of student lending programs to the budget reconciliation package, which will include final revisions to the Democrats’ sweeping health care legislation.

But defenders of the private student loan industry in the Senate are intent on keeping the student loan initiative out of the health care legislation, and some Democrats are also worried that including the education measure could hinder efforts to pass the health care bill.

You can replace the text I bolded with these names: Senators Thomas Carper (D-Delaware), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Mark Warner and Jim Webb (both D-Va.), and the GOP (by which I mean the Republican Party and Senator Ben Nelson, nominally a Democrat from Nebraska). These six Democrats and many of their cross-aisle brethren are staunchly opposed to the president's proposed fix to the student loan system. The fix would essentially eliminate an expensive middle-man, by making the government responsible for directly lending to students instead of paying banks to make the loans. Obama has proposed using the money the government will save to offer more Pell grants to low-income students.

Why oppose this? How can you even oppose this? Well, you can oppose this if there are banks in your home state that are currently making a profit off of taking the government's money, loaning it to students, and then selling those exact same loans back to the government. These banks employ people, and these people vote. If you then consider it easier to screw the low-income students in your state than to tell the high-income bankers they'd best look for new jobs, you oppose student loan reform legislation.

This opposition has made it impossible for Obama to get 60 votes on the bill in the Senate. Sounds familiar, right? So Senate Democrats -- and I do applaud them for this -- have decided to combine Educating America and Making America Healthy into one big Making America Better package to be passed through reconciliation. Majority votes can make both healthcare and a more efficient student aid process a reality.

Why does this impress me? Because this is a big gamble. You pass these two things together, and it's excellent, fantastic progress. You fail to pass these two things -- and it's a much bigger setback than simply failing to get one or the other through the process.

The beauty of this attachment, though, is that every person who votes against reconciliation can be accused of a two-sided attack on the most vulnerable members of our society: Hard-working Americans who want nothing more than to pursue the American dream without drowning in school debt or hospital bills.

I'd lay 10:1 odds that the Dems won't be courageous enough to stick that knife into their GOP friends next fall, but that doesn't mean my memory won't be so long. Hi, Ben Nelson. Yes, I see you there. And I will see you again in 2012.

Specter, should he prevail against Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania’s May 18 Democratic primary, will face former GOP Rep. Pat Toomey this fall. Specter barely beat Toomey in the 2004 GOP primary, and the prospect of a rematch against an even-stronger Toomey this year helped prompt Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party a year ago.

At first, Specter’s plan seemed to backfire. Polls started showing him losing the general election to Toomey -- although many of these surveys came from  Rasmussen Reports, an outfit that, some have noted, has a knack for portraying the GOP’s poll standing in rather favorable light.

Rasmussen’s most recent poll of the race, conducted on Feb. 8, showed Specter losing to Toomey, 47 to 38 percent.  But then, a twist: A March 2 survey from the more reputable (if less prolific) Quinnipiac Polling Institute gave Specter the lead, 49-42 percent.

So, which poll is right? Actually, they both might be (at least for now). The reason has to do with the one major difference in their methodologies: likely voters vs. registered voters.

Many pollsters are reluctant to sample "likely voters" this far from an election, as it’s hard to predict who’s planning to show up. Quinnipiac falls into this category; it sampled "registered voters," without asking who’s likely to vote. Rasmussen, however, has been using "likely voters" for all of its (many) polls this campaign cycle.

Notably, a third polling organization, from Franklin & Marshall College, was in the field around the same time as Rasmussen and Quinnipiac.

F&M offered both likely voter and registered voter models, and found Specter leading Toomey 44-40 percent among the broad pool of registered voters, and Toomey ahead of Specter 44-34 percent among the narrower likely voter pool.

This suggests a serious problem for Democrats this fall. The “unlikely voters” who are weeded out from registered voter polls are the young, the poor and people of color. When these constituencies show up, the results are usually good for Democrats (as in Barack Obama’s 2008 victory). But when they stay home, it gives the GOP an opportunity to achieve a 1994-like result.

To survive 2010, then, the challenge for Democrats is clear: They must turn unlikely voters into likely voters. And the clock is ticking.