So who needs to vote anyway?

It was another interesting day at work today. RealClearPolitics again picked up one of my blog items, this time one done the day before about the simply marvelous idea of writing a "deem and pass" rule to allow the House to take up amendments to the Senate health bill and deem the underlying bill passed without actually having to take a vote on it. Nancy Pelosi was refreshingly frank about why the idea appealed to her -- it would relieve some House members of actually having to vote on a bill that remains unpopular amongst the public at large (though I have to admit the margins are narrowing) and particularly unpopular in the swing districts occupied by moderate to conservative Democrats who are deeply conflicted about ObamaCare.

Anyway, by mid-afternoon the post had gotten around 7,000 hits. By way of comparison, in a moderate week the entire Orange Punch blog usually gets 7,000-8,000 hits. It lkooks as if the ket to success is getting other sites to link to our material -- but we knew that anyway; the problem has been figuring out how to get them to do so. It turns out that we did little or nothing to urge RealClear to link to us, we just gradually started to appear on their radar. Maybe it's good (or provocative) writing? Maybe it's provocative headlines. Thirty years in this business and I'm still often baffled by what appeals to people or pisses them off.