When Barack Obama says that the health care debate isn’t about him, he’s also cleverly letting the Blue Dogs — who might join up with the GOP to "break" him — know that there’s a cost to them of a Democratic Presidency broken on the shoals of health care reform: their seats, and maybe even their House majority in 2010.

Whose Waterloo will that be, then?

Obama’s not up for election in 2010, but the entire House is, and Democrats in the most conservative districts will pay the price at the polls of another Democratic president who fails to deliver on health care.  It’s the memory of the 1994 debacle that the Blue Dogs and Senate ConservaDems need to keep in mind.  Obama has time to come back by 2012; voters will look to punish someone, and quickly, if the three-quarters of us who want a robust public option don’t get one.

Asked if the Democrats appropriately fear their own president, Ron Brownstein (with Andrea Mitchell, via Digby) pointed out that any rational politician first of all fears her own extinction:

I don’t know if Obama is feared, but I think the period in the wilderness is feared. And what Obama has increasingly argued in private to democrats is that the lesson of Bill Clinton’s first two years is that no matter how fast you row or no matter hard you try to separate yourself from me, if I fail you will be the ones to pay the cost in these 2010 elections. And I think that argument does have some sway.

The Blue Dogs must realize that a broken Obama presidency, in which the American people feel justly betrayed by the Democrats, will first of all wash over them. It’s they, who serve in districts most vulnerable to GOP challenge, who will feel the voters’ wrath next year. Should the GOP be triumphant in its dual victories over Obama’s twin domestic priorities — health care and climate change — it won’t be the Democrats in safe, double-digit registration-advantage districts who’ll find themselves out of work.

It’s the Blue Dogs.

So the politics of health care are clear: help the GOP break this president, and suffer in 2010. Or help this president keep his promises, let Americans have the robust public option they know covers everyone and saves money too, and keep your seat in 2010.

Unless the Blue Dogs believe that they will be invulnerable to GOP challenge next year because they crossed the aisle? Surely they can’t be so naive to think that the most conservative Democrats will be exempt should the wave go against Obama next year?

The GOP will go for the easy pickings in 2010; the easy pickings are the Blue Dogs.  They have the most to gain if Obama keeps his promise to the American people on health care — and the most to lose if the GOP stops him.