At the beginning of last week, the White House press corps questioned press secretary Robert Gibbs about why President Barack Obama was not scheduled to join Massachusetts attorney general Martha Coakley to campaign for what has almost inexplicably become a toss-up race to fill the seat of the late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy.

Should she win Tuesday, Coakley would be the 60th vote needed to pass health reform, and she also happens to be staunchly pro-LGBT, having filed the sole lawsuit on behalf of a state challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

But her campaign has left a little something to be desired and Republican Scott Brown, who counts being a former Cosmo centerfold among his many credentials for representing the Bay State, has managed to make the race a dead heat. (BTW, does anyone really believe that if Coakley — or any woman for that matter — had once posed as a centerfold, they could be a viable candidate for the U.S. Senate?)

So when one reporter asked why the president wasn’t going and Gibbs offered, “It's just not on our schedule,” no self-respecting journalist was going to stop there.

“All right, then why is it not on the schedule?” the reporter persisted.

Gibbs: “It's just not on the schedule.”

“Has he been asked by the Coakley campaign to come?”

Gibbs: “Not that I'm aware of.”

“Has he been asked to stay away?”

Gibbs: “Not that I'm aware of.” [Laughter]

It went on, but you get the idea. Predictably, the White House changed its tune by the end of the week, and President Obama did indeed campaign alongside Coakley on Sunday.

Bottom line, the stakes are too high not to at least try, especially with the term “reconciliation” creeping back into the Washington lexicon at the thought of Democrats losing their 60th vote on health care. (Reconciliation is a procedural maneuver that would allow Dems to pass certain portions of health reform with only 50 votes — but it wouldn't be pretty, to say the least).

Turns out the Coakley race is not only key to bagging health reform so Democrats can finally pivot toward other legislation, but it also might serve as a bellwether for Dems on social issues. That reality was apparently a point of discussion at the emergency meeting called by major donors and the LGBT lobby groups last week in order to strategize about repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.”