Seems like just a few weeks ago that President Barack Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders were putting on their sneakers in preparation to run a health care reform victory lap.

With votes in both the House and Senate behind him, all that was needed was to merge the separate bills for Obama to achieve the single most important legislative victory in his young presidency.

But something strange happened on the way to getting health care for millions of uncovered Americans. It lost its steam.

Now the whooshing sound you hear from the White House and Capitol Hill is the sound of Obama's dream legislation going down the drain - to be replaced by a new scaled down model of health care reform if it survives at all.

On Tuesday, Obama's health care plan was dealt a serious blow when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat held for almost 50 years by health care champion Edward "Ted" Kennedy. With that seat in GOP hands, giving the party 41 votes in the Senate, Democrats lost the ability to head off Republican efforts to filibuster and delay the health care reform package from coming to a vote.

After the vote, President Obama announced he could support a scaled down version of health care reform legislation.

Then on Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the senate would have to alter its version of the health care reform bill before it came to the House, because she didn't think she could rally enough votes to pass it.

Pelosi had been trying to get House Democrats to support the Senate version of the bill to save time and get it passed swiftly.

Only time will tell whether Obama can regain his political footing and get health care reform back on track.

But I wonder if the president's failure to make health care reform a burning issue for the average American will doom its success.

Talk with your neighbor, and see if health care reform is the issue that is foremost on their mind. I have, and it's not. That's not to say that people don't see rising health insurance costs and a lack of coverage for too many Americans as important.

Its just that unemployment, falling real estate values and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem more pressing right now. Health care reform isn't the issue that gets people in the streets, demanding their lawmaker's attention.

President Obama has spent more than a year trying to convince Americans that health care reform was his most pressing issue. It hasn't worked.

Now, with the politics of the day moving against him, Obama really needs to sell us all on health care reform or give up this fight.