but I don’t think the Rebublicans will have to be on record voting for the public option…they don’t have to vote at all. The Dems need 60 votes, period. There doesn’t have to be 40 votes against, right?

It’s a new headline with the same things stuffed inside (minus the Medicare expansion.)

I would stake my life on it…didn’t we go this way with the vote to discuss the bill?

Lieberman was against it and then voted for it…By tonight they will have worked him over with a ball peen hammer, an old dental drill and some battery cables.

Rahm will show him the heavy duty construction bag and the shovel leaning against the wall in the WH “special room” and the rest will be history as Americans get drive by colonoscopies at 7-11.

www.jeannie-ology.com

It will never be easier for the Dems to get 60 votes than it is now. Sanders-Burris-Franken-Feingold-Brown know that mid-term elections will thin the ranks of Dem senators and the public option is far less likely to get added later, unless it is by administrative fiat–which is not out of the question with this administration. More government control of health care is the one aspect of health care reform that Dems have been unwilling to compromise, which shows you what the Dems real motive in trying to ram the legislation through is.

But I agree with vamoose. Dems will never be closer than right now so they will figure something out.

A single Mary Landrieu vote just to start debate was worth almost a third of a billion dollars to Harry Reid. They are at the one yard line and they’ll give the ball to William the Refrigerator Perry if they have to. They’ll eye gouge, they’ll facemask – ok you get the point.

People are focused on 2010 thinking the Dems will waver on Obamacare because of the upcoming election. They also note the cratering public opinion of this bill. Both of these are true, but I would argue that Dems are focused on a much bigger prize: an eternal majority.

Consider than seniors usually vote Democrat. Why? Social Security and Medicare. But seniors are natural conservatives on grounds that the older you are, the more conservative you are in general. But add those two massive entitlements and boom, instant guaranteed Democratic vote. Of course neither system is fiscally sustainable but Congress folk live in the here-and-now as we all know. The future is someone elses problem.

Dems want to expand that guaranteed bloc to the entire population. When an entitlement has been in place for a few years, people get used to it, doesn’t matter that it’s shockingly unsustainable; a whole generation will grow up with Obamacare and will come to expect it.

This is why Pelosi is willing to lose 30 seats. This is why there has been no limit to what they do, say, bribe, or promise in either house.

Eternal Majority.

Until you and someone else above said it, I hadn’t thought about the idea of the GOP forcing all 60 Dems to vote against the public option by either voting for it or voting present, and failing to get Lieberman’s vote if even one of the Dems doesn’t vote for it. That makes this pretty amusing, though I wonder whether Snowe and maybe one or two others would go along with that strategy. As we’ve seen so many times before, each defector gives cover for a Dem, though in this case it’s for a liberal Dem rather than a moderate one so it’s probably not that meaningful.

This twist makes it even more interesting than what it was. And it puts Obama in the position of having to lecture the Democrats to all vote against the public option today. I love it!

Have you ever noticed the smell at the monkey house when you first walk in? After you’re there for a while the smell doesn’t bother you.

These guys have been in the monkey house too long – this bill smells with or without the public option and abortion demands. The American people know it and are making their voices known – but the monkeys at the zoo aren’t listening.

Call or VISIT your Congressman today and breath some fresh air in their lungs. Call your favorite liberal and explain to him / her exactly what else is in this bill that MSM fails to report. Share the stench. After all, we are our brothers keeper.

Bring on the bananas, it’s going to be a long day.

How are the moderates in the Senate going to align with the leftists and progressive in the House? Both sides have drawn lines in the sand, and they are parallel to each other…and don’t seem to cross.

This happens with every major bill. The question is, where is the leadership? Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are having a historic level of failure on this one.

http://neoavatara.com/blog/?p=9078

In a daily kos recommended diary this morning entitled “Call to Defeat the Bill – it’s time” (sorry I don’t know how to link) a poster “randomfacts” had this to say about the way forward for the progressive agenda in response to another post:

“Yes there is (a way forward, but)* coverage expansion is scary. Coverage expansion plus public option is uber scary. Public option in isolation is not quite as scary. It is actually quite popular, as the polls show.

What we Progressives want is single payer, which is coverage expansion through public option. Here is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get halfway there– the coverage part. Once that is out of the way and the focus turns to public option, the debate becomes a lot easier.

If the bill dies, not only does the ball not move, but future leaders will be convinced that no comprehensive reform can ever pass. If Bill Clinton had passed universal coverage in 1993, Barack Obama’s bill would be all about public option in 2009. that would have been the sole area of debate. And it would have been a lot less scary because we would already have had 16 years of universal coverage. Public option would have been a minor change.
But because Clinton failed in 1993, we have to do all at once, which is impossible.

You have to be pragmatic. Build up your house one block at a time. Don’t kick the whole thing down because the roof can’t go up at the same time as the foundation.”

My question is will healthcare pass if the progressives are getting some of what they want? And can Lieberman and maybe even some Republicans sign onto this agenda?

Thanks!

* my addition for clarity

I still want to see that steak through it’s heart, that cross on it’s chest, that garlic around it’s neck…and see it buried 6 feet deep in a bed of salt before I breath easy because I’ve declared this thing dead too many times already only to see it rise up from the grave….let’s pray you are right…and we also need to pray we don’t have some RINO pull a last minute rescue just when the steak is about to be driven home

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

The notion that all 40 Republicans would vote against pulling the public option is ridiculous. With the leadership ham strung on these “message amendments,” why would the suddenly become hypocrites and vote against the greatest “message amendment” of them all… the one they’ve been attacking since the start? If Reid puts an amendment on the floor to cut Medicare and the public option, it will get a good chuck of GOP votes.

That’s just how incompetent we are.