Last night was a monumental one in Washington, where the health care bill H.R. 3962 passed with one Democratic vote to spare, and help from one Republican. For all the kabuki hand-wringing, the choice to be made was not this health care bill verses a better one waiting to be drafted, but this one verses waiting for another generation. Just over half of the Blue Dog Coalition voted for the bill. Their whip, as you may know, did not. And you thought quarterbacks played offense.

Congressman Heath Shuler often explains to Asheville/Buncombe activists something he thinks they need to understand – there is more to his district than Buncombe County. I wince every time he tells a group in Buncombe that they really don’t understand the 11th district “west of the Balsams.”

It’s not the best way to win friends and influence voters in a county with about 40 percent of the registered Democrats in the district. Even if he means well. Even if he’s right.

For readers who are new arrivals, the Balsam ridge forms the border between Haywood and Jackson counties. The Blue Ridge Parkway crosses U.S. 23/74 at Balsam Gap (el. 3400 ft.) between Waynesville (where the congressman lives) and Sylva, NC. Shuler was born further west, in Bryson City, NC in Swain County. Cherokee, Graham, Clay, Swain, Jackson and Macon counties lie “west of the Balsams.” I don’t get out there often enough.

It is a two hour drive from Asheville to Murphy, and a world away. People in these counties well off the interstate grow up and die knowing each other, knowing who is a native and who is not. (I have lived within 90 miles of Asheville longer than the congressman has been alive, yet I will forever be someone who “ain’t from around here.”) Internet connections are spotty out west, I’m told, and not exactly household necessities. The mountain region west of the Balsams is sparsely populated and rugged – not exactly rich with canvassable neighborhoods. Clay and Graham counties each have populations of only about 10,000.

There are Democrats out there. Not hemp-wearing Asheville Democrats, maybe, but Democrats, and more left-of-center than some here believe. At 10 a.m. on a weekday ahead of the 2006 election, it was a delight to find twenty people gathered at a Murphy campaign headquarters to discuss get-out-the-vote efforts. At a meeting this year after one of the votes on the stimulus bill, Democratic county chairs from across the district gave Shuler’s staff a tongue lashing over his no vote.

NC-11 is, on the whole, a moderately conservative one, with about 35 percent Republican registration and some leftover Reagan Democrats on the rolls. In 2008, Obama won only Buncombe county and Jackson county, home of Western Carolina University. He narrowly lost Madison and Swain. Shuler is a good fit for the district, whether Buncombe progressives like it or not. But it might be strategic for the congressman to show them a little more love whether or not they understand how things are done west of the Balsams. His vote on Saturday night did him damage that only a vote for final passage of the health bill might repair. Might.

Democrats in Buncombe are already gearing up for 2010 and choosing which campaigns to get behind with dollars and volunteer hours. Buncombe Democrats won 36 of 36 races in 2008. Democratic turnout was over 2 percent higher here than the statewide average, with voter registration and early voting crushing the GOP candidates. On election night 2008, North Carolina went blue by 14,000 votes. It was Buncombe’s 17,000 vote margin for Obama that put him over the top.

That’s how we do things east of the Balsams.