With Health Care Reform, Democrats are faced with one of the most important votes of their careers. Most Americans, most Congresspeople, most Democrats, most Independents, and the current President of the United States want health care reform.
Yet, people like Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh are threatening to filibuster this legislation that will deliver the most important improvement in our social safety net since Medicare was enacted.
They know that they can't win an honest debate, and that they are in the minority, so they are using this arcane filibuster rule to defeat the will of the people.
Harry Reid doesn't want to use Reconciliation to push this legislation through. Fine. I'm looking for 31 Senators who will pledge (threaten) to remove any non-cloture-voting Senator from the Democratic caucus.
Even without these five regressives, the Democrats would still have 55 votes. That's enough to do whatever Harry can't seem to do with "sixty".
Ask your Senator to make this pledge:
"I will vote at the earliest opportunity to remove from the Democratic caucus any Senator who does not vote for cloture on the health care reform legislation."
Senate Democrats don't need Harry's approval to do this. If the reluctant five can't vote for cloture on this, then they aren't really Democrats anyway.
I realize that this removal will place these Senators at the bottom of the Senatorial seniority list and strip them of any chairmanships. That's the point. I also encourage the remaining Senators to shun their heartless colleagues.