Finally!

This is the strategy that many of us have been arguing for for months.

Using a wily procedural maneuver to tie Republican hands, House Democrats managed to pass, by a vote of 234-188, legislation that will allow the Bush tax cuts benefiting only the wealthiest Americans to expire.

(Actually, I didn't know about the wily procedural maneuver, but for a long time I've been saying that they should just go ahead and pass the cuts for incomes up to $250,000 and just let the R's do whatever they're going to do, but the principle's the same.)

They really put the Republicans in a box: vote for something they didn't like, or vote against tax cuts for people who make less than a quarter of a million a year. They chose the second option.

They can come back later in the lame duck session, or next year, and tell the American people that it wasn't good enough to cut taxes for 98% of us, they also want to cut taxes for the top 2%. Let them fight on that issue.

This is another major success for Nancy Pelosi. It also takes some of the pressure off Obama to make a deal with the R's on the other stuff.

What's the down side? The Republicans stop being accommodating?