Whitehouse has not dealt with HCR legislation in completely good faith. The trickery that has been played is to deliberately delay and pooh pooh the Public Option, and then at the tail end black mail the Progressives into dumping the Pubic Option by raising the specter that they mast pass any bill or else the consequences for Dems will be bad come election time. Despite all the show put on by the President, everybody knows that should this come to pass, Corporatists in Whitehouse and the Hill would have won and the public would have lost.
However these Corporatist Dems, dragging the collaborating Progressives with them, will find that their favorite slogan "Votes are simply not there in the Democratic Caucus is in fact a subuku dagger when the voters tell them "Votes are simply not there for Corporate Stooges".
Joe Lieberman and the bad Blue Dogs exercised great power by threatening to not providing the last few votes to get to the 60 needed to break the filibuster constantly applied by the the "Party of No". Essentially traitors ready to collude with the 40 strong enemy - if their wishes were not met. These dogs withstood the populist attacks to serve their Corporate Masters faithfully.
They wanted to lobotomize the HCR bill (along with GOPsters) to the point that it became toothless harmless to create competition for and implement solid regulation of the Insurance Industry. They succeeded in pulling out core features (enormously popular among the voters) like the Public Option and Medicare Expansion.
Recently, to remove this potentially fatal threat to a HCR bill posed by a certain GOP filibuster, a movement has started to use reconciliation (51 votes, not 60) procedure to push the HCR bill through. This 51 vote requirement would obviate the sabotage by the Corporate dogs.
In Q4, 2009, more than 51 but less than 60 Senators claimed to be for the PO. In an interview on National TV, Tom Harkin said that he counted 55 or more votes for the Public Option.
So the progressives should have been popping champagne, right. Not so fast. All of a sudden the leaders (and of course the Rahmobama Whitehouse) started dropping hints that the "votes were simply not there" to pass a Public Option even under reconciliation. Apparently all 55 are not flesh and blood tigers. There are enough Paper Tigers in the flock, who are suddenly having problems with their intestinal fortitude. Apparently these paper tigers were roaring, having convinced their masters of the non passage of the PO or Medicare Expansion thanks to the curmudgeons like Nelson, Lieberman, Lincoln etc.
With reconciliation as the pathway to legislation - the paper tigers can not be counted upon to whip even 51 votes. Whether it is the corporate masters or the Rahmsian Mafia twisting the tails of the paper tigers is moot.
Having invited so much scorn from the public because of their inability or unwillingness to stand for the Americans, this kind of selling out will be a death knell for the Party. To keep using the excuse "Votes are simply not there in the Democratic Caucus" will not only be an acknowledgment of cowardice or corruption, it will get the Dems on the Hill to be considered certifiable.
These incumbents will find that their favorite slogan "Votes are simply not there in the Democratic Caucus" is in fact a subuku dagger when the voters tell them "Votes are simply not there for Corporate Stooges".
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