Here they are:
- What Democrats does he expect will vote for his watered-down, worse-than-nothing "compromise" plan?
- What Republicans does he expect will vote for his bill?
The answers to these questions are probably obvious, but I will still elaborate below.
On question #1, the only Democrats that would support a bill with no public option and no employer mandate are a handful of conservative, Blue Dog types -- maybe a few dozen in the House and a half-dozen in the Senate. The vast majority of Democrats realize that reform needs to be halfway decent or else it will be political suicide. Certainly we can't force Americans to buy crap private insurance, without adequate subsidies, and expect them to be anything but angry about it. Most Democrats understand that and will not vote for Baucus-care.
On question #2, the Republicans want health care reform to go down in flames. They do not want to see President Obama signing a major bill (bad as it may be). And they are also smart enough to want the Democrats to have full ownership if it goes wrong. Not a single House Republican will vote for Baucus-care or any bill. And in the Senate, keep in mind that not even Enzi or Grassley have yet agreed to even Baucus's ridiculous proposal. At most, even that sellout deal will attract two, conceivably three votes.
So you add up the votes from the two parties and you see that Baucuscare has not a chance in the world of passing, much less being signed by the President. It's as if Baucus is living on a different planet from everyone else. He is so drunk on his own self-importance that he is like Rip van Winkle. He's been sleeping in his little coccoon while the world has passed him by. And his little fantasy of being the key broker of this great legislation has no connection to reality.
Or perhaps the intention was never to pass reform at all, but simply to delay things until the poison pill that is Baucuscare could be released, destroying any hope of reconciling the conservative and liberal factions among Congressional Democrats -- and destroying health care reform with it for another generation.