The biggest political news of the weekend centered on Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s late-hour decision to support a cloture motion to move the federal health care debate forward in the U.S. Senate.

Lincoln was the last Democrat to stake out her position on the motion, giving Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid the 60 votes he needed to avoid a Republican filibuster.

The vote put Lincoln at the center of a political firestorm.  Not that she hasn’t already been catching heat from the left and the right for her health care positions, but the last minute vote declaration was political manna for Lincoln’s GOP opponents.

In a chorus of unison, Republican challengers and the national GOP accused Lincoln of deciding health care reform’s fate.  In truth, many more votes remain, but Lincoln did keep the debate alive.

Politico takes a look at how the politics could play out for Lincoln, including how she’ll want to shift the focus from health care to agriculture in the coming months.

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, who as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is in charge of increasing the Democratic Senate majority, downplayed that the Democrats’ push for a public option could hurt Lincoln, saying the other aspects of the bill that would extend coverage and reform the private insurance industry would be a boon to 2010 candidates.

“The public option has taken on a life bigger than itself, but it’s lost sight of the totality of all of these reforms and what we’re doing, that’s what I think will be the powerful opportunity for any senator up next year to talk about,” Menendez said.

Asked if Lincoln was in trouble next year, Menendez pointed not to the health care issue but to another matter entirely: her chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee.

“Make a compelling case to dump the chair of the Agriculture Committee in a state where 25 percent of GDP is agriculture for a freshman member of the minority party.”