We have 51 votes to pass health care reform, but we do not necessarily have 60 votes to force cloture. Okay, fine. Let's let them filibuster.
Right through Christmas.
That's right, Senator Reid, you can keep the Senate in session for as long as it takes. Have your members plan a holiday with their families in DC, and have the other guys plan to spend Christmas ranting about socialism on the Senate floor.
(More below the fold)
Christmas is a very slow news time, but if you plan it right, you can fill the airwaves with Grinchy stories of the Party that Stole Health Care. You can arrange photo ops with Democratic families bravely staying in Washington to give the country the gift it has been waiting for, while the Republicans are offering only a lump of coal.
Let them filibuster. Make them filibuster. And while they do, be ready with a well-planned campaign to show just how they are taking the country hostage.
"We Democrats will do whatever it takes to give this country affordable health care for all, even if we have to work through Christmas and spend our entire holiday season listening to the other side try to take it away," said the Senate Majority Leader, flanked by the 58 members of his caucus who have pledged to stay on the job until health reform passes. (New York Times, Dec. 23, 2009 - perhaps)
In yet another holiday season when Congress has sent our young men and women to risk their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, can the Democrats show the courage to stay in their DC townhouses until the filibuster fails?
Seriously, a filibuster is only effective if it is staged and continues. We shouldn't yield to the threat of a filibuster. We should make them do it, and explain it to the American people. On Christmas.