Here's the bottom line for today: we're just as likely to get health care reform with a robust public option tonight as we were this morning. Nothing fundamental has changed. What matters is still the "Durbin bottleneck."
What's the Durbin bottleneck? I'm glad you asked.
For one thing, we don't even know that the Durbin bottleneck is Durbin's. I name it after him because he is the Senate Majority Whip -- the guy who counts the votes, know how many votes we have, how many are needed, and how to get them. He's the guy who's supposed to know how good of a plan we have the votes to pass.
Maybe Schumer is actually counting the votes, maybe it's Boxer, or Rockefeller, or even Rahm or Biden. The point is, someone's counting the votes, someone knows how wide the bottleneck is and what we can shove down it. Everything before we get to the bottleneck is theater.
Now, I don't mean to disparage it by calling it theater -- theater is important. The Brooks Brother's riot that helped end the Florida recount was theater, as were the teabaggers at the town halls of August. This is a time when political action really does involve acting: we're showing how upset we are about the prospect of failure, overreacting to each bad sign, donating money and calling our representatives with a fervor.
That's great. That's what we're supposed to be doing. We just have to recognize that it is theater. It's helping to change the width of that bottleneck. But until we see what fits into the bottle, we've lost nothing.
Here's what I wrote this morning, before the votes:
It's really important to note that what happens here, while important, is nowhere near a decisive battle. We'd like the bills to be as good as possible, but a defeat of the Public Option in this committee is losing a battle, but not a war. If that happens, we look to what ends up in the blended bill that will come from the HELP and Finance Committees, which apparently is Reid's call (and will presumably be based on Schumer's whip count of what's the best bill that can pass the Senate.
Even losing there isn't the end, because it just sets up reconciliation with the House. That -- and then getting the reconciled bill through the Senate -- is the decisive battle. So I hope that people won't be renting their garments over whatever happens today.
This is a long process and we're in a good position. The best thing that we have going for us is that we're right -- right on policy, but more importantly for present purposes right on politics. Not having a public option will harm the Democratic party -- and harm the moderates in the party worst. At every stage, we need to hammer home that point -- it's hard for our Members of Congress to ignore. But we have to expect reversals -- we are, after all, fighting entrenched power -- before, ultimately, we win.
I keep hearing people say that we need 51 votes to pass a bill through reconciliation, but I believe that that includes Biden's tiebreaker, meaning that the true total is 50. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.) I don't expect any Republican, even Snowe, to vote for a good bill, though I'd be happy to be wrong, so I leave her and Voinovich and any other possible Republican vote aside. Let's just look at the Democratic caucus. Let's first start with the unquestionable "yes" votes, broken down into bite-sized groups of five:
Akaka
Bennet
Bingaman
Boxer
Brown
Burris
Byrd
Cantwell
Cardin
Casey
Dodd
Dorgan
Durbin
Feingold
Franken
Gillibrand
Hagan
Harkin
Inouye
Kaufman
Kerry
Kirk
Klobuchar
Kohl
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Menendez
Merkley
Mikulski
Murray
Reed
Rockefeller
Sanders
Schumer
Shaheen
Stabenow
Udall, Mark
Udall, Tom
Webb
Whitehouse
Wyden
I know that people are saying "we have 60 votes, we can blame the Dems if we fail," but these are 42 actual reliable Dems. I'm just not going to lump them into my criticism, sorry.
Next we have the moderate Dems who will nevertheless, after talking about how great and how tortured and how wise they are, will end up voting for a strong public option, after exacting an appropriate emotional price from, specifically, the likes of us progressives:
Begich
Feinstein
Johnson
McCaskill
Nelson, Bill
Reid
Specter (already says he'll vote for it, but will be a pain out of habit)
Tester
Warner
Now I could be wrong about some of these -- Begich, Johnson, and Bill Nelson in particular might be casting hard votes back home -- but I believe that in the end, even if it's kicking and screaming, we will get these nine votes. If I'm right than our bottleneck is wide enough to get a robust public option through reconciliation, even before we get to the real problem children. The key to passing the public option is that (1) it really is cheaper and (2) it really is disastrous for our party if we don't. The above Senators are likely to listen to reason, when push comes to shove, even if they demand a few goodies in return.
Now how wide can our bottleneck get?
Baucus -- won't have much reason to vote no, in the end.
Bayh -- if he were the deciding vote, he'd milk it for all he's got, but if he's not he'd probably come along.
Carper -- probably only for a weak public option, but not impossible to move if appealed to by Obama.
Lincoln -- doesn't like the politics are bad, but if really needed, might be had for a price
Nelson, Ben -- if it's really cheaper, he'd come along
Pryor -- it'll depend on the polls. Not a lost cause.
And that's 57. What about the last three?
Conrad -- can he accept defeat? Well, once it's clear he was wrong about "the votes," maybe he'll have no choice.
Landrieu -- committed, but she always has her price
Lieberman -- the least likely vote; would try to bargain vote for his political future. Not worth it.
(By the way -- we can lean on these people, you know.)
Durbin will be keeping track of who's on board for a strong and a weak public option, which are really the two most likely outcomes at this point. So, he needs to figure out who he loses with a weak public option. That's where we help make the political and policy case: that "weak" is too weak. The point is: when the time comes, he'll know exactly where we stand -- as will Obama. And we will react accordingly. We may not get the best bill sent out of the Senate to conference, but so long as we have enough sway in the committee -- that's the key battlefield, we should know what we'll get out of it when it's over.
I don't think that we'll get 60 votes for cloture, though it's not impossible, but I also think that we can strongarm our way through reconciliation no matter what the House parliamentarian rules, and frankly it would be sort of nice to win one by throwing some elbows and watching the Republicans snivel over it. Lieberman is probably hoping that he'll be the last vote needed for 60 and that he can bargain his vote for a cleared primary field, the answer to which is: screw you. (Hell, if that happens, maybe Voinovich or someone will vote with us for cloture just to piss off Lieberman; surely he's made some enemies.)
The point is that everything before we get to the bottleneck -- and, remember, we go through it twice, before and after conference -- is just positioning Senators to see how hard they'll be to push to do the right thing. We're doing OK there. Things are falling our way. We just have to make sure that the conference committee is as good as possible and that we can stampede our Senators at the end when push comes to shove -- and I do trust Obama there.
So, seriously, don't be depressed about this minor skirmish. Four out of the nine hardest Democratic votes to get -- probably five out of the hardest fourteen -- were on that committee; of course we lost. But look at that list and imagine how much force we can bring to bear -- with decency and cost-effectiveness and political pragmatism and our side.
Look forward to the Durbin bottleneck -- because we're going to cram a robust public option right through it.