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WASHINGTON (AP) -- In Congress these days, the health care debate is as much about patience as patients.

In a closed-door meeting of feisty House Democrats this past week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., served notice that in these final days before the Senate and House present comprehensive bills to overhaul the nation's system, hers is running short.

Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., had interrupted Pelosi's presentation about one version of the bill with questions about its cost. According to Pomeroy and others, she cut him off - twice - with a question of her own:

Is there any version you could support?

Yes, Pomeroy said, but not the one most likely to succeed.

Pelosi moved on.

To the White House and Democratic leaders, Pelosi's question is the only one that matters at this late date. The answers help divide lawmakers into two columns: "yes" and "yes, if" under certain conditions. In another private meeting Friday, Pelosi forced her rank and file on the record by asking for a show of hands to register support for the public option plan she prefers.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., select committee chairmen and senior White House officials are meeting nightly in search of a bill that could win the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

At the White House, President Barack Obama is willing to play lobbyist in chief, but first he needs a bill.

So close to that pivot point and getting close to year's end, it's no longer a debate about whether there will be a health care bill. The questions are when, how - and who can compromise.

Democratic leaders expect their members, looking ahead to next year's elections, to vote for a health care bill despite any misgivings. But the vote-counters have no real way of knowing until each chamber produces a bill.

That's why negotiators have slogged through months of hearings, hundreds of amendments and meetings with members that require interminable listening, waiting, reassuring, cajoling and answering questions from the recalcitrant.

For Reid and Pelosi, that process continues. Making a member feel heard - and promising something he or she can boast about at home - can pay off.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., sent out a blaring news release Friday after her meeting with Reid, saying she raised "the unique challenges Louisiana is facing in terms of Medicaid and the special concerns I have about teaching hospitals." She said he understood these challenges and considered ways to address the problems.

Patience is limited, however.

Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had a testy exchange after Schumer made comments on cable news that some saw as pressuring the Nevada Democrat to make up his mind about putting a government-run insurance option in the Senate bill.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Friday that patience among negotiators runs out "a little more often now" than earlier in the process.

"I say, 'Hey, we are in this together. Sixty votes. Let's keep our eye on the ball,'" he said.

The pressure on Democratic lawmakers is enormous.

The success of a health care bill is largely the success of the Democrats who control Congress and the president they helped elect. In a time of lingering recession, there is no more compelling pocketbook issue than health care overhaul. It's an effort that's intensely personal because it could affect eve! ry Ameri can.

Much depends on each lawmaker's needs - political, substantive, even temperamental - leading up to an election in which all 435 House members and one-third of the 100-member Senate face election. The calculus is different for each member on the fence.

The vote of one might hinge on fear of voters' cries about government-run health care. A lawmaker with an eye on growing deficits might want to know about containing costs. What someone might really want is the ego-stroke and the political cover of a personal appeal from the president.

An awkward meeting with Obama in the Oval Office Thursday evening illustrated just how far senators are from putting those pieces together. The only takeaway not likely to be disputed: Reid grabbed an apple on the way out.

Neither of the government-run options had received pledges of support from 60 senators but both could hit that threshold, Reid told Obama, according to congressional officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive talks.

One version would use the public option as a threat that would kick in if private insurers do not lower premium costs by certain deadlines. Some liberal senators would have trouble voting for that one, Reid said. The other would allow states to opt out of the public option, chief proponent Schumer told Obama.

The meeting ended with the president pledging to help rally support for whichever version crosses the 60-vote threshold first.

For Reid, it was back to his office and the phones. On Friday, Reid was meeting one on one - with no staff - with Landrieu, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Baucus, whose committee had passed one of the two Senate health care bills.

"We're having a debate, and members have to reflect and represent their districts," Pelosi said. "And we're hearing from them."

NEW YORK (AP) -- The leader who prods his critics to put politics aside is doing anything but these days: President Barack Obama is campaigning for his party's future.

Barreling Tuesday into several days of frenetic political activity, Obama The Campaigner has work to do in helping raise money and rally loyalists for lesser-known Democrats.

Dollars aren't materializing as much as expected - even with a record-shattering fundraiser like Obama at the party's helm and working furiously to bring in cash. And, two weeks before off-year elections, Democrats are facing the prospect of losing hard-fought gubernatorial races in Virginia and perhaps New Jersey, contests that depend on the Democratic base and that to a certain degree are shaping up as a test of Obama's political strength.

All that's a wake-up call for a party that controls both the White House and Congress and for a president elected in an electoral landslide less than a year ago.

So, as the Democratic standard-bearer, Obama is putting his time on the line and his prestige to the test with a blitz of fundraisers and campaign appearances.

He is asking donors not just for money, but also a burst of campaign energy to help him get his enormous domestic agenda passed, particularly health care reform. He does knowing it is harder to get people jazzed up to lobby Congress than to win an groundbreaking election.

"It now falls to us," Obama told donors at a $30,000-per-couple fundraiser on Tuesday. "I hope that everybody here is willing to recapture that sense of excitement that comes from a big but achievable challenge, not a superficial excitement that comes from election day, but an exciteme! nt that comes from knowing we took on something that had to be taken on."

Obama stood to raise as much as $3 million in New York for the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday as well as an unspecified sum for Bill Owens, the Democrat in a special congressional election in upstate New York. He paired an official White House event - a visit to a joint terrorism task force center - with the fundraising trip, meaning a reduced cost of presidential travel for the campaigns while taxpayers pick up the rest of the tab.

In the coming days, the president also will campaign for Democrats in New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Florida, a notable cashing-in of Obama's time as he fights to pass health care reform and tries to find a winning Afghanistan strategy.

It's not just this year's races that are at issue but also the broader state of the Democratic Party - from cash-flow to enthusiasm - heading into next year. In the 2010 elections, Democrats will try to defend their majorities in Congress and seek to pick up governor's seats.

The party in power typically loses congressional seats in the first election of a president's term. Obama certainly wants to avoid the fate of Bill Clinton, who similarly swept into office with youthful energy only to see his party lose control of Congress two years later.

With all that at stake, Obama is choosing to insert himself intensely into the process while keeping in mind that he also could be associated with defeats should Democrats lose.

Including Tuesday's events, Obama will have headlined 23 fundraisers so far in his nine-month presidency, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who keeps a detailed log of presidential activities. This compares with six for President George W. Bush's first year in office, though his efforts were cut short because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Obama! is calc ulating that he can't afford criticism from the Democratic Party's base supporters that he's not helping candidates. But there are also risks to full-throttle campaigning: His own power is being gauged.

"If governors and members of the House and Senate come to the conclusion that Obama's personal support is not transferrable or that his supporters have not remained mobilized, the impact of his personal charisma will be seen as more limited than it was a year ago," said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College in New York.

"All in all, he gets more credit for making a public effort than for sitting on the sidelines and watching Democrats at risk fend for themselves," Sherrill said.

Overall, Democrats aren't in terrible financial shape.

Through September, the committee that works to elect Senate Democrats brought in $33 million compared with $29 million for its GOP counterparts, and the committee that works to elect House Democrats has raised $44 million compared with $27 million for the countering Republican effort. Also the Democratic and Republican committees that work to elect governors were almost even in fundraising during the first half of this year.

But Democrats certainly aren't seeing the jaw-dropping sums of the 2008 presidential campaign year. And some Republican candidates are out-raising Democratic opponents in the money hunt in key 2010 races.

In Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk out-raised Democrat Alex Giannoulias last quarter and is keeping pace overall in the race for Obama's old Senate seat. In two states where Democrats hope to pick up Senate seats open because of Republican retirements, Republicans Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio vastly outraised Democrat Kendrick Meek in Florida in the past quarter, and Republican Rob Portman is swamping Democrat Lee Fisher both this past quarter and overall.

In the House, several dozen Republican challengers in Democratic-held districts have raised more than $100,000 through September, an increase from June when that was true of just over a dozen such GOP candidates. And as of June, the Republican governors had $20 million cash on hand, compared with only $12 million for Democratic governors.

Also causing concern for Democrats: The DNC hasn't raised as much as party operatives thought it would and the Republican National Committee under Chairman Michael Steele has exceeded Democratic expectations. The DNC has raised nearly $55 million, including $8.2 million last month, through September, compared with $59 million, including $8.7 million last month, for the RNC.

Democrats are being hampered by a host of factors, including the recession.

Obama also extended his ban on money from political action committees and lobbyists to the DNC, deep-pocketed Wall Street donors aren't ponying up as much as expected, and grass-roots supporters who were the bedrock of last year's campaign aren't as energized as they were when there was a clear objective - taking the White House from Republicans by electing Obama.

"It's hard to raise money if you're in power. The ideological giver or party giver may be thinking, 'Didn't we just win this election?'" said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University government professor who has studied giving to parties and candidates. "Also, Bush is gone, and a lot of the Democrats were motivated by anti-Bush feelings in previous cycles."

---

Sidoti reported from Washington.

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PURCELLVILLE, Va. (AP) -- Just a year afterwards this ancient Confederate state helped elect a black man president, Democrats are desperately aggravating to hang onto the governorship.

A lot has changed: Loyal Democrats are added chastened than aftermost fall. Republicans are energized. Independents are proving to be ... independent. Voters of all kinds seem disenchanted.

Just like Americans nationwide.

The challenge between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat R. Creigh Deeds provides a snapshot of sorts - 12 months afterwards America adopted Barack Obama as admiral and advertisement Democratic majorities in Congress, and one year afore midterm elections in every state.

And the picture, in Virginia as in the nation, is not pretty for Democrats.

Republicans are far added accursed up than Democrats, and independents who leaned larboard just a year ago are tilting away. Frustration over the status quo, fear of the country's direction, and disillusionment about political leaders span the ideological spectrum.

"I'm disgusted by everything. We couldn't be at a worse abode in this country," said Maria Taylor, a waitress in Purcellville's baby business district. She calls herself an absolute and hasn't absitively whom to abutment as Virginia's abutting governor.

At the adjacent hardware store, adolescent undecided aborigine Cary Koppie, a one-man mowing company, is so affronted he says he may sit out this election. "They're all a agglomeration of liars," he said. "You don't apperceive who the heck to vote for anymore."

Two weeks afore the Nov. 3 election, polls show McDonnell, a above stat! e attorn ey general, leading Deeds, a above state legislator, by about bifold digits. After two terms of Democrats at the helm, voters may afresh be appetite change. Every four years since 1997, Virginia has called the applicant of the opposite affair from the one that controls the White House.

Prospects arise better for Democrats in New Jersey, area embattled Gov. Jon Corzine is in a close race with Republican Chris Christie in this year's added governor's race. Corzine is favored to win; it's a Democratic-leaning state and absolute Chris Daggett is sucking abutment from both parties.

Obama will be campaigning for Corzine on Wednesday and has stops lined up for Deeds, too, afore Election Day.

The outcomes won't adumbrate abutting year's midterm results. So much could change. Jobs could return. Health care overhaul could pass. War in Afghanistan could be winding down. People could feel better about area the country is heading.

But given Virginia's newfound swing-voting behavior, the McDonnell-Deeds outcome will be a key admeasurement of how America feels and, perhaps added importantly, how absolute voters are acting ahead of the 2010 elections. Independents will be analytical as Democrats try to protect their majorities in Congress and pick up governorships in a number of states.

Here in Virginia, as well as in the wider U.S., Republican crossover voters and independents are breaking from the Democrats, partly because they're put off by Obama's government expansion and expensive policy proposals like bloom care. The question in Virginia is how they'll split between McDonnell and Deeds - if they turn out at all.

"Neither one of them makes me particularly excited," said Dale Thompson, a gun-shop buyer who shuns affair labels and thinks "society's a mess." Still, he's acknowledging McDonnell - "the least angry of the bunch."

Down the str! eet, toy -store buyer Bill Lupinacci, 51, a Republican who backed Democrat Tim Kaine for governor in 2006 and Obama in 2008, is undecided - and turned off by both the candidates for the state's top office. "They're spending best of their time on attack ads rather than putting forth their positions on the issues."

McDonnell has been forced to defend his graduate academy apriorism from 20 years ago that criticized career women, gays and cohabiting bachelor couples. Deeds has drawn criticism for afresh refusing to specify how he would raise the $1 billion a year bare to revive analytical transportation projects.

The race additionally is an important test of whether the droves of base Democratic voters - the blacks, Hispanics, bachelor women, young bodies and first-time voters whom Obama admiring aftermost abatement - will turn out and abutment a Democrat if the admiral is not on the ballot.

Some are certain not to cast votes this abatement because only the best motivated bodies turn out in off-year elections.

There additionally are break that some Virginians who made up the president's diverse winning coalition were enthusiastic Obama 2008 voters, not reliable Democratic Party voters, and perhaps not alike Obama 2012 voters, should he run for re-election as expected. That would mean they would be up for grabs come 2010.

Consider Jake Crocker, a self-employed marketing adviser who owns Richmond's Easy Street cafe. He backed Obama and said he'd gladly do so again. But he's voting for Republican McDonnell because he sees similarities to pro-business Democrat Mark Warner, the above governor and now senator. "He's a guy who gets it," Crocker said of McDonnell.

Conversely, Eddie DuRant, an environmental adviser in Virginia Beach who supported Obama a year ago, afresh absitively to vote for Deeds. DuRant was swayed by McDonnell's graduate thesis, saying, "It appears he ! has an u ltraconservative amusing agenda that is not in band with what I believe."

Places like Purcellville in Loudoun County, a sprawling swath to the west of Washington, could provide clues to aborigine attitudes in added swing-voting places in battlefield states: Arapahoe County in suburban Denver, Anoka County abreast Minneapolis-St. Paul, Westmoreland County abreast Pittsburgh, Jefferson County abreast St. Louis.

Around here, farmland, country manors and a bevy of loyal GOP voters have given way to shopping centers, subdivisions and a mishmash of Republicans, Democrats and independents in recent years. Loudoun County's accelerated advance has changed its politics; the area has become a analytical front in statewide elections.

Long a reliably Republican bastion, this is area Democrats aboriginal felt the start of a national political sea change in 2005. Their gubernatorial candidate, Kaine, won the county and the race. It accepted to be a harbinger for 2006 when Democrats, fueled by huge assets in counties like Loudoun, won one Virginia Senate seat, and 2008, when they claimed the second while voting for a Democratic presidential applicant for the aboriginal time since 1964.

This county and others adjacent are expected to advance either McDonnell or Deeds over the top - and accord important clues about the country's aggregate state of mind.

---

Bob Lewis reported from Richmond.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- For Democrats determined to get a health care bill, Sen. Roland Burris is like the house guest who couldn't be refused, won't soon be leaving and poses a plausible threat of ruining holiday dinner.

Suddenly, he can no longer be ignored.

The Illinois Democrat, appointed by disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, says he'll only vote for a bill to provide health care to millions more Americans as long as it allows the government to sell insurance in competition with private insurers.

And he says he won't compromise.

"I would not support a bill that does not have a public option," Burris, 72, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "That position will not change."

Those words caught the attention of the very Democratic leaders who tried to keep Burris out of the Senate, suggested he resign and have shunned him in unprecedented fashion. Burris is not the only Democrat to insist on creation of a government-run health plan. But he is the one who has the least to lose by defying President Barack Obama and the Democrats who once turned him out in the cold rain.

It was early January and Blagojevich had appointed Burris, a former Illinois attorney general, to Obama's former Senate seat - defying Democrats in Washington who had wanted someone without a tainted patron and with a better chance of winning election in 2010.

What happened next was a procession of ugly images, from Burris' rain-swept news conference after Democrats turned him away from a swearing-in to Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush daring Democrats to block an accomplished lawyer who would be the chamber's only black.

Bitt erly, the Democrats seated Burris. But when it came out that Burris had admitted what he had denied under oath - that he'd unsuccessfully tried to raise money for Blagojevich - Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., suggested that Burris resign. He refused.

A Senate ethics committee probe is pending into Burris' statements. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, refused to support any effort by Burris to run for a full term, and he will leave the Senate in 2011.

Meanwhile, his relationship with the rest of his caucus has settled into one of mutual, if chilly, benefit.

It works this way: Burris stays mum about any bitterness he may feel about his reception, and he gets Obama's Senate seat for two years. Democrats seat him, don't speak of him, and get his loyal vote at a time when all 58 Democrats and two independents must vote together to prevent Republican filibusters.

They've never needed 60 votes like they do on the yet-to-be-finalized health care bill. A disciplined grin shows that Burris knows it. No, he says, he will not vote for any version of a government-run plan circulating in the Senate, other than the full-blown one from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

He won't vote, for example, for Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe's idea to use the threat of a public option to force insurers to lower premiums by certain deadlines. He hasn't seen the details of another idea, proposed by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., that would allow each state to decide whether to offer public coverage to compete with private insurers. The health committee's proposal, he says, must be in the final bill to earn his vote.

"Yeah, that's the one," Burris said.

By definition, all 100 senators are relevant because any one can block Senate business unless there are 60 votes to override the objection. But Burris' stated position on the public o! ption me ans that Democrats can no longer take his vote for granted.

And yet, Democratic leaders aren't talking about Burris.

Instead, they're talking confidently about having the votes for the biggest policy overhaul in a generation, a signature issue for Obama and the Democratic Party.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Burris' demand alone makes him no different than other senators seeking this or that in the bill.

"I will do what I can to address the thises and thats," Baucus said. "But my strong feeling is in the end, the need for health care reform is to get 60 votes (and) is going to trump the concerns that some might have."

For his part, Burris says he's just representing the wishes of his state. And he's relentlessly loyal to the arrangement. His only acknowledgment of being treated differently than others is a reference to the "distractions" that marked his first weeks in office.

Ask him whether he feels badly treated by the leaders, and he'll answer with a question:

"By whose standard?"

Go a couple more rounds, and he'll elaborate, generally.

"I feel that I've had great opportunities here," Burris said. "I feel like anytime I had a question that needed answered, anytime I needed something, there was certainly assistance there."

Does he feel respected and listened-to? Burris pauses and looks puzzled.

"Yes. I'm a senator from Illinois representing 13 million people. I'm one of 100, and I speak on the floor, I preside over the Senate, I co-sponsor legislation," he says. "I'm very busy, I'm very challenged, and I have one problem."

He grins.

"I enjoy what I'm doing."

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