Kubler-Ross

Denial

Nancy Pelosi: "It’s still a very exciting initiative, ranks right up there with Social Security and Medicare, and we are meeting with our members at the caucus and different groups of the caucus to hear how they perceived the best way and how they would prefer to go forward. But we will go forward."

Anger

Katrina Vanden Heuvel: "The Obama White House needs to take immediate, bold action [...] Jettison those on the White House economic team whose slow, timid response to the crisis of unemployment and to Wall Street's obscene excesses helped create the conditions for the tea party's inchoate right-wing populism [...] After a year of being knifed by the GOP at every turn, isn't it time to give up on faith in genteel post-partisanship? Go after those who oppose your common-sense tax on big banks to recoup the taxpayer-funded bailout money"

Bargaining

President Obama: "I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on"

Depression

Gail Collins: "It’s very hard to write when one is crouched in a fetal position under the bed. Maybe if I remove the pillow from over my head …"

Acceptance

Lanny Davis: "It's the substance, stupid! [...] We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama—a party that is willing to meet half-way with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big-government solutions."